King’s Hawaiian Looking for Human Centered Design Leader at Torrance, CA Full Time

At KING’S HAWAIIAN® we create unique and irresistible Hawaii-inspired foods that people love beyond reason. We are not in the business of copying mainstream products or pursuing short-term trends. Our goal is to create new, long-term value to market with consumer-led innovation ideas. This role will report to the Head of Innovation and be a part of a multi-disciplinary Innovation & Commercialization team with a start-up-type culture. In this role, you will closely collaborate with experienced chefs, food scientists, brand experts, and other key players through our innovation process.

As we engage with consumers through our innovation process at King’s Hawaiian, we value:

Consumer closeness – we believe it’s our responsibility to directly observe and engage with consumers. The best way to uncover and address consumer opportunities/problems is if we personally and deeply understand them.

Speed to prototype – we strive to be quick and flexible to test and learn in real-world purchase and consumption environments. We believe the best way to learn is with real food in real places with real people.

Hypothesis-led experimentation – we believe in the importance of defining our consumer-led belief and rationale to guide us. We won’t be right every time, but we know what we’re trying to learn and design specific experiments to prove out the truth.

Who Are You?

The Human Centered Design Leader is an explorer, experimenter & designer. Your curiosity takes you away from the office and into the world with consumers where you guide project teams into immersive discovery and testing experiences. This consumer closeness is key to understanding the truth of consumer behavior to unlock opportunities/problems to solve and design winning solutions.

The following 5 characteristics describe you perfectly:

Curious – You are not someone who only reads the headlines. You have an instinctive desire to always dig deeper and understand why. You act like a detective, with a curiosity that takes you further and further into the lives of consumers.

Explorer – Your curiosity leads you away from your desk and into the world with consumers. In your journey you discover new opportunities and then explore your hypotheses with prototypes in real-world environments.

Self-starter – Our future doesn’t shape itself. You do not sit back and expect complex problems to simply work themselves out. You are an initiator and take action.

Passionate – You are passionate about creating joy and shared moments for people with irresistible food. Your passion drives you to seek and imagine new possibilities.

Entrepreneurial – You don’t get trapped in the status quo. You have a curious imagination and knack for asking “what if…”. You find a way to move forward through the ambiguity. You don’t need a precedent because you can create the precedent.

Essential Job Duties And Responsibilities

• Act as a key driver in progressing innovation growth at KING’S HAWAIIAN®.
• Lead and develop a team of new product insights professionals and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Champion a human-centered design approach through the innovation process and build a culture of consumer immersion and hypothesis-led product testing.
• Intimately study and understand categories and consumer behavior to uncover new product opportunities leveraging in-field immersive and ethnographic research.
• Leverage ideation frameworks and tactics with innovation team members to convert insights into actionable ideas and solutions.
• Design and execute consumer studies with prototypes to test and validate hypotheses and inform product design.
• Work on diverse innovation project teams (i.e., with chefs, food scientists, marketers, sales experts, etc.) to develop new product prototypes to explore and test consumer-led hypotheses. Lead these teams into the field to experience consumer closeness and direct visibility into consumer behavior and motives.
• Lead best practices and continual improvement resulting in sharper insights, more insights, and faster timelines through the innovation process.
• Be the authority on the consumer by answering critical questions about the consumer and holding the team accountable to launching consumer-validated products.

Basic Qualification (education And/Or Experience)

• Bachelor’s degree and/or higher education in anthropology, social science, or similar field preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in consumer research with extensive experience in new product innovation.

Additional Qualifications (job Skills, Abilities, Knowledge)

• Expert in ethnographic/qualitative research.
• Expert in hypothesis-led user testing.
• Expert communication and presentation skills.
• Proficient in moderating ideation brainstorms.
• Proficient in project management.
• Proficient in managing and working with third-party companies and consultants.
• Expert ability to multi-task and contribute to projects at the same time.
• Consistently demonstrate King’s Hawaiian values of excellence, dignity, and saying it like it is in a way it can be heard, as well as our behaviors—curiosity, collaboration, critical thinking and emotional intelligence.
• Ability to travel up to 10%.

We work in a hybrid environment where we are in the office Monday – Wednesday and remote on Thursday and Friday (work permitting).

The salary range for this role is $175,000 to $245,000 with an annual bonus.

King’s Hawaiian is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for our ohana.