Product Design Manager

Join one of the largest global media and publishing brands producing the highest quality content with a footprint of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 territories across print, digital, video and social platforms.

The client

The company’s portfolio includes many of the world’s most respected and influential media brands, reaching 84 million consumers in print, 367 million in digital, 379 million across social platforms, and generates more than 1 billion video views every single month.

The Team:

They are a team of experienced designers with expertise in customer experience and product design, brand identity, visual design, UX content design, and research.

The core mission in Global Product & Technology (GPT) is to empower their brands for business and creative success by creating the next-generation suite of content publishing, membership and commerce experiences.

You will be working alongside international colleagues across the world, working with stakeholders in the US and UK HQs as well as within 10 other teritories.

The role

This Lead Product Designer will be based within the ‘Lifestyle’ portfolio of brands.

In partnership with other Design Leads you will grow and deliver the Product Design capabilities across this group globally in collaboration with (but not limited to) Content & Storytelling, Commerce, Audience Development, and Commercial.

The role will also partner with the Product Management and Engineering organisations to envision and ship product experiences that delight their users, but also drive engagement and loyalty to provide increased and new revenue streams for the business.

What will you be doing?

Design for the Customer:

• Align with key stakeholders to map and define the strategic end to end customer experience
• Develop briefs and activation frameworks to enable Product Design and content teams to translate high level strategic thinking into tangible customer experience and design solutions.
• Employ user research, and analytics data to develop a deep understanding of how users engage, what matters to them and identify pain points.
• Collaborate with product, experience design and technology leads to develop high level strategic plans that will meet customer needs and deliver against commercial targets.

Designing for commercial outcomes

• Lead design practices that focus on measurable outcomes for the customer and business.
• Create design solutions based on hypothesis and data informed approaches that can be measured.
• Prioritise the design roadmap based on commercial outcomes.

Product Design Experience

• Partner with Product & stakeholders to lead the product discovery phases of work.
• Advocate for and execute a user-centred design process.
• Lead on design practices that focus on concepting, prototyping and testing early in the process
• Creating a shippable design mindset – Release often, test, learn & iterate
• Guide the creative vision and execution for the product brands digital visual identity.
• Evangelize product design patterns throughout the product brands globally.
• Create compelling narratives, prototypes and stories to present  strategic recommendations to senior stakeholders.
• Design and facilitate workshops to encourage collaborative ownership of problems and defining collective plans of action

Leadership

• Build shared ownership of problem solving, and collaborative methods of prioritisation and decision making within your team.
• Empower and mentor a team of Product designers and user researchers.
• Promote new ways of working to create high performing cross-functional teams.
• Foster end-to-end thinking and an experience design led culture.
• Support the development of the team culture and values.

The candidate

What you need:

• A portfolio that shows a wealth of clear end to end case studies that evidence UX solutions as well as strong visual design.
• Experience leading cross-platform digital experiences at consumer-focused technology or media companies.
• A track record of empowering and manage teams of designers.
• Excellent communication skills to clearly communicate and lead diverse, multi-disciplinary teams.
• Mastery and able to guide on user experience design, including usability principles, user research methodology, testing techniques (A/B, Multi-Variant), design theory, and interaction design.

Benefits package:

• Salary up to £80,000
• Learning Hub where you’ll find you’ll find a wide variety of courses and trainings. Over 16,000+ courses in seven local languages!
• 25 days holiday and extra days of annual leave for if you get married, move house or want to volunteer (Plus Bank Holidays)
• Hybrid working (Three days in London)
• Competitive pension scheme
• Bupa Private Healthcare
• Season ticket loans
• Cycle to work
• Employee Assistance programme
• Bring your dog to work
• And lots more

Intervirew Process:

Stage 1: 1 hour with the Head of Department

Stage 2: 1 hour panel interview with members of different teams