Principal Product Designer, Customer Success

As a Product Designer at Appian, you will work as part of innovation teams & delivery teams to help our clients solve challenging problems & create compelling experiences.  In this role you will be involved in all parts of the design & delivery process, including: user research, brainstorming, concept development, prototyping, working with developers, running tests, adjusting design based on real world feedback, & monitoring production usage & value of our applications.  

Why is this role important to Appian?

Appian is a low code platform that can be used to solve critical business problems & achieve strategic opportunities.  Our customers are many of the biggest & most successful companies in the world.  Solving their problems creates great benefits & value for our customers & our customers' customers.  Solving these problems requires great design.   

As a Principal Product Designer you will

Design interactive experiences on the Appian platform through prototyping, storytelling, alignment diagrams, process design, & interface design. You will work as a member of an innovation team that uses design thinking-based engagements to diagnose critical business & co-create a compelling vision of Appian solutions.  You will also collaborate with agile development teams to guide & influence application design.  A non-exhaustive list of responsibilities includes: 

• Research users & their problems - work together with multi-disciplinary teams that include delivery managers, developers, product managers, & stakeholders on different projects to become subject matter experts on the projects users & the problems they encounter. Learn & document users motivations, triggers, aspirations, & goals.  Give equal priority to user experience as customer value.
• Participate in ideation phases; be creative, spot opportunities for breakthrough ideas & concepts.  Seek analogous sources of inspiration, & bring inspiration back to our design teams & client partners
• Design & Prototype - develop first drafts of a solution for users; use many different tools & methods for the discovery & ideating processes.
• Build applications - continuously collaborate with product managers and/or Product Owners, developers, SMEs, & end users.  Participate in all phases of the application lifecycle from discovery, to delivery, through adoption.  Sit together with Delivery managers, customers, & developers building the product.
• Test with our users - test ideas & designs. Write & evaluate well articulated hypotheses using various test methodologies, including A/B testing, surveys, interviews, & pilots.
• Iterate - use feedback & test results to inform changes & ensure that our solution will solve problems when we launch.
• Shape Customer Successs design discipline across Appian globally by sharing with, & learning from, other interaction designers.
• Mentor & advise other Appian designers & developers. 

Relevant experience, mindset, & traits 

You have 4+ years of working experience in designing digital products & bringing them from ideation to implementation.  You bring experience building & using prototypes to test assumptions & collect feedback on a design direction. You are highly collaborative, & maintain a mindset of curiosity & openness when working across teams & functions. You practice curiosity by asking questions, learning through secondary research, talking to experts or others not like yourself, requesting feedback from others, & seeking out other perspectives.  You enjoy working directly with customers & end users. You are comfortable learning & working within the Appian platform knowing all product design must ultimately be realized in Appians low code platform using Appian/SAIL implementations. You are willing to travel up to 40%.  

Additional details are as follows: 

Your experiences likely include the following: 

• Fluency in prototyping & experience with different tools such as AfterEffects, Keynote, Figma, etc.)
• Interaction design leveraging underlying conceptual models (e.g. domain models), task flows, & control layouts to manipulate those concepts
• Designing navigation
• Usability testing
• Creating alignment diagrams (customer journey maps, service blueprints, experience maps, mental model diagrams, spatial maps & ecosystem models) to illustrate aspects of an individual's experience, build empathy with users, & increase understanding of actual customer needs. 
• Using visualizations & story-based design to provide a shared big picture to help drive consistency in action; bring focus on points that matter in a complex problem space; reveal opportunities; communicate complex ideas effectively & efficiently, & tell compelling stories. 
• Product discovery techniques, including: alignment diagrams, storyboards, user interviews & user research, sketching, storyboards, prototypes, experiments, value hypothesis & concierge testing, demand testing
• Studied topics related to Experience Design, Interaction Design, Human Computer Interactions and/or worked in roles such as Digital Product Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, or Visual Designer

It would be a bonus if you have 

• Run product discovery workshops/engagements
• Experiences with lean experiments & testing techniques such as customer discovery interviews (most commonly problem interview), solution interviews, comprehension testing, smoke tests (most commonly with landing page or video), concierge tests, Surveys design & analysis, split or A/B testing.
• Evaluative Experimentation (evaluating a well articulated hypothesis) - Evaluative methods: surveys (closed), smoke tests (landing page, video), sales pitch, flyers, fake door, clickable prototypes, usability, analytics, surveys (NPS, product/market fit), discovery testing techniques (testing feasibility, usability, value, business viability) 

About Us:

Appian helps organizations build apps & workflows rapidly, with a low-code automation platform. Combining people, technologies, & data in a single workflow, Appian can help companies maximize their resources & improve business results. Many of the worlds largest organizations use Appian applications to improve customer experience, achieve operational excellence, & simplify global risk management & compliance. Our employees create opportunities to drive hands-on impact both with our customers & throughout the organization, which creates an environment where meaningful work is met with career growth & opportunity. As a result, we are proud to have been recognized as a Washington Post Top Workplace for seven consecutive years. Simply put, we are changing the way businesses operate & our employees are to thank for Appians success.

Appian Corporation is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. Further, Appian will not discriminate against applicants for inquiring about, discussing or disclosing their pay or, in certain circumstances, the pay of their coworker, Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at ReasonableAccommodations@appian.com & let us know the nature of your request & your contact information. Requests for accommodation will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.