Job Description

At M&G our purpose is to help people manage and grow their savings and investments, responsibly. As a business, we are continuing to take steps towards a sustainable future, delivering better long-term solutions for our customers and clients and identifying new opportunities to make a positive impact for our environment and communities. To help us achieve our vision we\xe2\x80\x99re looking for exceptional people who live our values of care and integrity and who can inspire others; embrace change; deliver results and keep it simple.

We will consider flexible working arrangements for any of our roles and also offer work place accommodations to ensure you have what you need to effectively deliver in your role.

Lead User Experience Designer

Location: Edinburgh

The Role:

As part of the Wealth Digital Strategy & Business Architecture Leadership Team, our Lead User Experience Designer has responsibility for our UX discipline and team. This team design journeys and experiences that make us easy to do business with and improve our ability to innovate. The role is critical in defining and delivering the target customer experience so that we can meet our strategic objectives.

We are looking for a candidate that thrives in taking high-level insights and problems through a robust design process that delivers the right outcomes for our customers and the business. We are looking for a candidate that understands how to drive through ambiguity to decisions that are grounded in insight and data.

The roleholder will be experienced in leading a UX team, covering research to delivery support, and be exceptional at developing talent and the capability.

Key Responsibilities

• Line management of the User Experience team
• Creating a psychologically safe team with high performance management
• Recruiting and developing talent
• Managing work allocation
• Represent user experience design as a discipline to the business and externally, advocating for where it can best add value
• Conduct user research and testing, and communicate the results Work with the customer insight team on thematic research, understanding how it relates to immediate priorities and ensure mutual shaping of work Maintain a clear vision of our personas and customer segments Maintain our understanding of customer needs/jobs to be done Support prioritisation, with data and insights, of customer needs and problems Develop user journeys, wireframes and prototypes based on user needs Collaborating with business SMEs, product owners and developers to create journeys that are easy and supportive Support design sprints and workshops by ensuring empathy with the customer and creating design artefacts to aid the process (i.e. personas, journeys, sketches and mockups) Resolve design conflicts and issues that arise during development, working with the delivery teams Meet agreed deadlines and negotiate workload as required

Core Competencies for the Role

The role holder must have the following skills, experience, and qualifications:

• User-centred design \xe2\x80\x93 demonstrable experience in design thinking methodologies and how they apply to UX design. This should include persona development, needs analysis (e.g. jobs to be done framework) and hypothesis driven development.
• User research \xe2\x80\x93 experience in conducting user research to understand customer needs and behaviours. This should include techniques such as user interviews, group co-creation, and persona development.
• Usability testing \xe2\x80\x93 experience in conducting usability testing to evaluate the usability and accessibility of products, ideally within financial services. This should include moderated remote and face to face testing, along with unmoderated testing. Critical to this is being able to communicate findings to stakeholders and drive design decisions based on research insights.
• Information architecture \xe2\x80\x93 knowledge of how to create information architectures to organise and structure content, ideally in financial services and wealth management.
• Interaction design \xe2\x80\x93 Evidence designing interactions that are intuitive and easy to use, through use of wireframing, prototyping and testing.
• Accessibility \xe2\x80\x93 knowledge of accessibility standards and how to design products that are accessible to all users. Techniques including colour contrast, working with assistive technologies and keyboard navigation.
• Design systems \xe2\x80\x93 experience working with, contributing to and maintaining a design system for consistency and efficiency in the design process. Experience with Figma is desirable, but evidence of using alternative systems is acceptable.
• Visual design \xe2\x80\x93 a good knowledge of visual design principles and how they can be applied to financial services.
• Business strategy \xe2\x80\x93 evidence the ability to understand the business strategy at a high level and the goals of the local organisation, and how to align UX work with these goals. This should include being able to communicate the business value of UX design proposals to stakeholders.
• Leadership - manage a high-performing team, develop new colleagues and embed a customer-centric culture that delivers value.

The following skills and experience are highly desirable:

• Technical knowledge \xe2\x80\x93 an understanding of software development processes (e.g. CI/CD, test automation) and key technologies in use in the market including front-end frameworks.
• Financial Services Compliance \xe2\x80\x93 UX professionals in the industry should have a good understanding of compliance and regulatory requirements including GDPR, COBS and relevant digital standards.

Work Level: Manager Expert

Closing date: 2nd August 2023

Recruiter: Phoebe Ewers

We have a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture at M&G plc, underpinned by our policies and our employee-led networks who provide networking opportunities, advice and support for the diverse communities our colleagues represent. Regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, nationality or disability we are looking to attract, promote and retain exceptional people. We also welcome those who take part in military service and those returning from career breaks.

M&G