Lead UX Designer

About the role
Working as part of multidisciplinary teams and reporting to the Experience Design Lead, the role of the Lead UX Designer is to lead a small team of UX Designers in creating design solutions that meet and exceed user needs and business expectations.
You’ll specialise in user research and will be responsible for supporting all UX and content designers to carry out research. You will also plan and lead user research to solve complex product problems.
You’ll be an expert in testing, iterating and improving digital products and services and will work with many different communities, understanding what will best serve our users

The things you’ll achieve
As the Lead UX Designer, you will:
• Lead user research across the wider team, supporting designers in product teams to plan, carry out and share their own user research
• Lead and plan user research with challenging user needs and complex user journeys
• Build user centred practices across the team, aligning and prioritising activities to fit overall strategic goals
• Develop and improve research and UX practice across the design teams and beyond
• Work closely with other disciplines, services and stakeholders to understand business and user needs and rationalise them to create efficient solutions
• Lead design workshops and crits
• Lead reviews, demos and show and tells, and support your team to confidently share their work
• Advocate for designers to work in the open, actively asking for and giving feedback
• Proactively identify issues for users and recommend solutions
• Define the information architecture and user experience of digital products, producing solutions for identified problems
• Produce user interfaces that will be implemented across Camden’s digital products and services
• Work closely with the Design System Specialist to advocate for best practice use of Camden’s design system

About you
As a Lead User Experience Designer, you’ll be an expert in planning and leading user research, with strong abilities in user experience, interaction design and user centred design principles.
You’ll have experience managing, leading or mentoring other designers, and feel confident advocating for best practice.

Knowledge
• Thorough knowledge of how to create inclusive designs for many different communities
• Thorough knowledge of human centred design practice
• In depth knowledge of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and a drive to advocate for meeting and exceeding these
• Thorough understanding of a wide range of research methods and the most appropriate way to apply them
• Good knowledge of methods and tools to analyse research data and synthesise findings
• Good knowledge of trauma informed and inclusive user research practices
• Applicable understanding of co-design practices
• Good understanding of the social and technological context of local government services
• Good knowledge of the technologies used to build and operate digital services

Skills and Abilities
• Identifying opportunities to gain insight into a problem, formulating hypotheses and making decisions on findings
• Creating frameworks, ways of working and guidance to help design colleagues carry out research and testing
• Proactively identifying changing user behaviour
• Understanding strategic context, navigating different organisational settings and adapting to and understanding user needs
• Ability to influence stakeholders and relentlessly advocate for Camden citizens and service users
• Effectively communicate and receive feedback to improve designs and products
• Awareness and understanding of agile methodology

Experience
• Leading, managing or mentoring design team members of those taking on UX design roles
• Planning and leading user research and synthesising findings
• Contributing to and using design systems
• Advocating for and mentoring designers in UX process activities including discovery, sketching, wireframing, prototyping and user journey mapping
• Building positive relationships with a range of both internal and external stakeholders
• Managing priorities across multiple products
• Creating and implementing UX strategies and standards
• Working as part of design teams with active working relationships with researchers, service designers, product designers and product managers

People management: Successful candidate will manage a small team of UX designers.
Work environment: This post requires at least one day a week in our 5 Pancras Square office.
At Camden we view work as an activity, not a place. We focus on performance, not presenteeism. We create trusting relationships; we embrace innovation rather than bureaucracy and we value people. Collaboration is the Camden way, silo working isn’t.
The application process: Anonymised Application – in keeping with Camden’s commitment to inclusion the recruitment to this role is anonymised and supports the objective of reducing the impact of unconscious bias, the process is supported by a panel interview.

Who we are

Diversity & Inclusion
At Camden, we value and celebrate difference and encourage diversity in all respects. Our diverse workforce ensures we represent our communities to the best of our ability and enables us to make better decisions. Because of this, we particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and those of other nonwhite ethnicities, those who identify as LGBT+, neurodiverse and disabled people.

Agile working
At Camden we view work as an activity, not a place. We focus on performance, not presenteeism. We create trusting relationships, we embrace innovation rather than bureaucracy and we value people. Collaboration is the Camden way, silo working isn’t.