Senior Experience Designer
About the role
This role is about building out and delivering on the experience design (XD) practice at Wolff Olins, in order to support our future growth aims and build our reputation. It’s critical to help us fulfill our ambition to design radically better businesses.
You will help build the consultancy’s understanding of and capabilities in XD and its role in brand. You will work on these types of projects for clients, through both existing clients relationships and pitches. You will help to advance our craft by working on project exemplars in XD.
This role has huge scope for creativity and diversity of work, defining the customer and employee experience often where there is a blank canvas or an open brief to transform an organisation, service or product in totally new and different ways.
Your experience, capabilities and attitude
- An XD practitioner – with expertise in an XD related field (e.g. service design, UX, customer experience). You will be well informed about best practice, on the cusp of emerging trends and new approaches and be experienced in user research techniques (diary studies, ethnographic, depth interviews etc.)
- An accomplished design craftswo/man, you’ll be able to take ownership of a brief (with some support as needed) from research to sign off with creative flair and forensic attention to detail.
- At this level, your core skills and sector experience are reasonably varied, you’ll be familiar with XD tools and techniques and be able to create solutions which consider the wider business context, broader customer experience and the implications for employees.
- Collaborative and persuasive. You’ll be comfortable and credible when talking XD with senior executives and delivery teams, able to sell the solution, build strong day-to-day relationships with clients and work closely with people outside your discipline and to understand others points of view in order to make the work better.
- Passionate about brand and it’s inter-relationship with customer and employee experience.
- Keen appreciation of design aesthetics, but a graphic design background is not required.
What’s expected of you
Key roles and responsibilities across projects, new business and internal areas.
Projects:
- Plan and conduct user research – using the most appropriate methods – to develop insights, discover opportunities, and define user requirements.
- Be part of inspiring stakeholder workshops to understand business goals, gather input and insights, and develop breakthrough new approaches.
- Act as the advocate for the consumer on all our projects. Making sure we’re constantly considering their needs and contexts.
- Design and present meaningful customer and employee experiences based on our client’s brand purpose and experience principles, using insights from users and business strategy, as well as wider industry and cultural trends.
- Work closely with internal stakeholders to ensure that the experience can be supported operationally, commercially and technically.
- Look for ways in which we can augment and re-appropriate tools (from brand and XD) across project types.
- Create elegant prototypes for key service touch points to illustrate the brand purpose and bring it to life in a compelling tangible way.
- Plan and conduct user testing and live prototyping of ideas and solutions, refining the product or service based on feedback.
- Work seamlessly in multi-disciplinary teams of designers, strategists, programme managers and developers.
- Travel when necessary for pitches and collaboration on projects.
New business:
- Proactively work with Principals and project leads across the business to identify opportunities for growth within existing relationships, with a constant eye on the pipeline and new opportunities.
- Work on pitches where experience design is core, and look for opportunities to apply XD thinking to innovate the current Wolff Olins offer.
- Be familiar and able to talk to our XD sales pitch and case studies.
- Develop a network of contacts through XD related events and content.
Internal / non-client:
- Champion, explain and demonstrate the XD process to the wider Wolff Olins community.
- Take part in the global XD practice across all our studios, and encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration.
- Help to grow the company’s reputation in XD through new credentials, thought leadership and speaking engagements.