Senior / Lead UX Designer

Zebra People have been exclusively retained to support John Lewis & Partners on their vast hiring plans on what’s set to be one of the largest retail digital transformations in the UK at the moment.

If you’re an experienced Senior / Lead UX Designer and want to be a part of this then apply below.

The client

Extremely exciting time to join them as they undertake a new ‘Partnership Plan’ which will see the expansion of digital, virtual and delivery services to get close to customers, reaching a profit of £400m by year 5.

They have a pledge to recruit young people coming out of the care system and have major commitments on cutting waste and net-zero carbon.

Being a Partnership for positive change, JLP is improving lives and building a more sustainable future. John Lewis is now a 60% online retailer and Waitrose has upped its online capacity for delivery to over 190,000 weekly slots

The role

You are a skilled and experienced end-to-end Experience Designer, who has a track record of projects proving your focus on creating outstanding customer experiences. At John Lewis, we’re going beyond the conventions of UX to create truly omnichannel experiences for our customers.

You can demonstrate working from discovery stage to finished product using user-centred design methodologies at pace. You can plan, rationale and execute a clearly defined and intelligently thought-through process in order to identify and meet customer and business goals. Importantly, you can bring stakeholders on this journey. You’ve a great eye for detail, are able to communicate clearly and can translate ideas to stakeholders and team members alike. Importantly, you know when a sketch is sufficient and a high fidelity prototype is overkill. You have previous experience working in Agile and understand what is required to ‘work lean’ – working closely with your colleagues to iterate and learn quickly.

In the manager role, you’ll be supporting your Lead by helping oversee and mentor a small team –giving timely direction, support and honest feedback – whilst working with your manager on day-to-day team activities. These include pushing the boundaries of your team’s thinking and challenging positively to improve ways of working and performance. Responsibilities include helping the managers to nurture and evaluate your team’s personal development, assisting with recruitment and onboarding activities when required, whilst driving knowledge-sharing and experience design advocacy. Above all, you’ll be focused on making the thinking real, to deliver on customer, Partner and commercial objectives for the Partnership.

You’re a people-person who can work in agile, cross-functional teams to deliver end-to-end products. You can inspire and motivate and get a kick out of bringing the team and stakeholders together to co-create greatness – exploring and defining what will delight the customer and achieve commercial success in equal measure. You’ll be a champion and ambassador for the customer experience for our digital and physical touchpoints across the entire business. Finally, your passion will be rewarded in the knowledge that you have driven the design of a compelling suite of propositions, services and experiences that will help grow long-term customer relationships. Through your Profession you will have the opportunity to develop and stretch personally and professionally to achieve your potential.

The Partnership supports agile and flexible working practices, such as when, where and how we work. We have several different ways to work flexibly, including part-time, flexible or compressed hours, and job sharing. Head office areas also support a blended working approach.

We celebrate diversity and inclusion in the John lewis Partnership and we are committed to becoming the UK’s most inclusive business, reflecting and connecting with the diverse communities that we serve.

The candidate

Supporting your Experience Lead to look after the team and plan and carry out team-related activities

Leading a small team of Experience Designers working in agile, multi-disciplined teams whilst fulfilling your own team obligations

Helping drive design quality, consistency and great ways of working between teams through a regular feedback process with your reports and line manager as well as the wider Product team. Ensuring that the communication is constructive and helping to promote a positive culture through team empowerment (Partnership Principle One)

Pro-actively troubleshooting and problem-solving ongoing team issues under the guidance of the managers

Promoting a user-entered design approach and encouraging your team to do so via team-share sessions, presentations and activities. You will play a lead role in sharing and developing the Community of Practice sessions alongside your fellow Proposition, Experience, Service Design and Omnichannel UI Leads

Building and developing relationships with design peers and business stakeholders to influence all aspects of the customer experience

Within your Agile delivery team, collaborating closely and regularly with colleagues, especially omnichannel UI, Innovation and Experience Research to brainstorm and generate ideas

Adopting a hypothesis-driven test and learn approach, carefully choosing the most appropriate research methods to validate your assumptions using a healthy balance of qualitative and quantitative research

Planning and facilitating workshops to align stakeholders, establishing customer, business and project requirements to identify risks and dependencies: eg. Running Google Sprints, visioning sessions, persona development, empathy mapping, end-to-end customer journey mapping and service design blueprints (across digital and offline)

Gathering and analysing customer and business data to support decisions: this includes inventory creation, data analytics, MVT testing, usability testing (remote and lab), heuristic analysis, competitor reviews, ethnographic studies, card sorting and surveys

Using user-centred frameworks and techniques to guide how services and products are created including Value Proposition Design and Business Model Canvases, Lean UX Canvases and Jobs-To-Be-Done

Being a guardian and advocate of the design system; using the design kits, components and assets intelligently

Conducting diligent QA testing across browsers and devices to meet acceptance criteria