User Experience Designer

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're 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.

User Experience Designer
Role Purpose As part of the Wealth Digital Strategy & Business Architecture Team, our User Experience Designers have responsibility for designing 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. We want a candidate that can support the delivery teams in the detail of implementing the design and the trade-offs that arise.

The roleholder will be an experienced user experience designer with a track record of delivering customer-led solutions in complex environments, that achieve value for multiple stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities
• 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - knowledge of how to create information architectures to organise and structure content, ideally in financial services and wealth management.
• Interaction design - Evidence designing interactions that are intuitive and easy to use, through use of wireframing, prototyping and testing.
• Accessibility - 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 - 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 - a good knowledge of visual design principles and how they can be applied to financial services.
The following skills and experience are highly desirable:

• Business strategy - 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.
• Technical knowledge - 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 - UX professionals in the industry should have a good understanding of compliance and regulatory requirements including GDPR, COBS and relevant digital standards.
Work Level: Experienced Colleague
Closing date: 12th May 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
Edinburgh UK

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