Overview of role

Experience Design Leads play a key role in our growing team. They join a highly collaborative and creative area of TfL which is responsible for designing world-class digital products and services. The role holder is accountable for the end-to-end delivery of their assigned work on time, to budget and to the agreed level of quality. The role requires:

• Strategic thinking â€” Experience Design Leads work alongside Product Managers and other key stakeholders to:
  • identify challenges and opportunities for the end-to-end experience of a digital service
  • deliver research, design activities and artefacts
  • contribute to a shared future vision and strategy for the experience of a service
  • work alongside multi-disciplinary teams throughout the design process, from discovery to delivery
• Hands-on design expertise in visual and interaction design, as well as design research.

Key Accountabilities

• Accountable for the end-to-end design of digital products and services, in collaboration with stakeholders and teams across TfL (and 3rd party suppliers) to ensure key projects are delivered on time, to budget and to agreed standards of quality. This includes:
  • Visual Design (sketching, creating concepts, developing standards & guidelines, delivering design assets)
  • Interaction Design (mapping experiences and creating wireframes, user journeys and prototypes at different levels of fidelity and interactivity)
  • Design Research (reviewing existing research, planning and conducting primary research and user testing activities)
• Contribute directly to the development of TfL’s experience design centre of excellent through the application of advanced design methodologies in order to develop informed experience design strategies and principles that align and compliment T&D strategies.
• Consult & provide expert guidance to TfL’s stakeholders throughout projects from helping them shape visions, providing narrative to proposed design and including them during testing/acceptance to maximise customer satisfaction.
• Propose, develop and own key continuous improvement activities which contribute to the maturity of the design team and deliver new ways of working to ensure the team delivers world-class user design experiences as a CoE for TfL 

• Manage & assure works of 3rd parties incl. suppliers and NPL’s when required ensuring TfL achieve maximum value from commercial engagements & to ensure projects are delivered on time, to budget & within quality parameters. 
• Provide design subject matter expertise and insight to product managers to ensure roadmaps are optimally informed and that user needs and behaviours are sufficiently provisioned for during roadmap development and product change initiatives (represent user needs which may not be explicitly defined by the users directly - e.g. behavioural traits). 
• Contribute to the maturity of the design team through optimally managing knowledge incl. carrying out industry analysis and horizon scanning, delivering key insights and proposing of new ways of working to the experience design team management.
• Exhibit the value of world class design to TfL stakeholders (incl. senior managers) through innovative demonstrations (e.g. Beta testing or prototyping) in order to achieve advocacy and investment from key stakeholder groups.

Key Interfaces

• Working with Project Sponsors and Product Managers to determine business needs
• Working with Product Owners and managers to define customer needs, business needs and technical feasibility
• Supporting technical architects and developers by delivering design assets and reviewing implementation
• Supporting Project Managers by estimating design activities and working to project timelines
• Engaging with external suppliers by reviewing design work and feeding back internal insight
• Engaging with other stakeholders across TfL by presenting design concepts and design thinking
• Supporting the wider Experience team in building awareness of service design and design methodologies

Skills, Knowledge & Experience 

Skills

• Proactive individual able to work independently to deliver key design activities and artefacts to strict deadlines  
• Time management skills, able to plan work and prioritise when necessary to meet objectives
• Collaborative individual able to work with different disciplines to achieve common goals 
• Able to structure and produce clear and well-researched design solutions for digital services and products. 
• Impactful storytelling and presentation skills, able to deliver compelling messages to stakeholders 
• In-depth knowledge in several of these areas: • Visual Design, • Interaction Design • Design Research
• Innovative and proactive, able to look at challenges from a different perspectives and work towards developing new and effective ways of doing things

Knowledge

• Ideally educated to a bachelor degree level or has the equivalent knowledge gained from professional experience.   
• Product design – a strong understanding of the full, end-to-end product design process and how different activities and deliverables inform each other, e.g. how research findings and strategy inform concept development and detailed design. Being adept at a wide range of human-centred research and design methodologies, e.g. understanding why and how methodologies are used in a given context. In-depth knowledge in several of these areas: • Visual Design, • Interaction Design • Design Research
• A good level of knowledge of project delivery methods, particularly Agile 
• Knowledge of primary and secondary research approaches (e.g. basic surveys and desk research)

Experience

• Experience in delivering complex design projects within multidisciplinary teams 
• Significant hands-on experience in visual design, interaction design and design research
• Experience in contributing to a growing team, by sharing knowledge, defining shared methodology, producing reusable tools and pro-actively supporting colleagues
• Experience delivering design within a technology focused organisation (desirable)

Equality and Diversity 

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability status.

On this recruitment campaign, as part of TfL’s continuing commitment to be an inclusive and equal opportunity employer we will be removing personal identifiable information from CVs and covering letters that could cause discrimination.