UI/Product Designer

• Location: London (we are currently ‘remote-first’, but you may be required to attend client offices and cxpartners’ sites for meetings and workshops)
• Contract: Permanent, full-time
• Salary: £35,000-£50,000
• Deadline: We will be reviewing applications for this role as they are submitted. So please don't delay your application, as the role may close without notice

This position is within our Home and Work (H&W) ‘pod’, one of our client-focused, mini business units.

Overall, cxpartners’ mission is to have a positive impact on people’s lives by helping organisations become more customer centric and thrive.

In H&W, our mission is to support good lives through excellence in digital experience, whether this is in developing services for the home, or improving employee experience and capability within the organisations who develop these services. The team operates as a design innovation partner for clients across the retail, hospitality, travel, energy and charity sectors.

We involve users to uncover breakthrough insights and respond through a service design process. We are pragmatic, not dogmatic, in our approach and are outcome-driven.

Often our work breaks new ground, and we innovate to achieve those outcomes. From our partnership with Google that has supported over 200 brands to measurably improve their UX maturity, to Samaritans where we designed their online chat service, which has helped those in crisis express suicidal feelings at twice the rate as other channels. We’d like you to be the kind of person who can help us do that.

We’re currently working with SSE, British Council, UCAS and many others with a commitment to improving lives - at home and work - through digital experience. In the past four years, the success of our process has seen us grow by 200%.

We’re a great place to work – you’ll love the environment, the people and the way the company looks after its staff.

cxpartners is made up of an incredible, diverse range of people. We're an equal opportunity employer and prize diversity as a strength. We’re keen to ensure we’re designing products and services that work for everyone, so our team needs to reflect that too. We particularly encourage applications from different underrepresented demographics. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, colour, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability or any other legally protected status.

Please don't be put off applying because you aren't a perfect match for our job description. If you are excited about the opportunity and think you can achieve the outcomes we are looking for, but aren't sure if you tick every box, we'd still love to hear from you.

User-centred design is at the core of everything we do at cxpartners. We’re looking for a UI/Product Designer to help us turn our research insights into high-quality, usable design solutions and digital experiences that make a real difference to people’s lives.

In the role you’ll:

• Work collaboratively
  Truly effective and innovative design solutions come from cross-functional teams. Our project teams include researchers, UX Consultants, technologists, project managers and clients working in unison. As well as designing, you’ll be involved in kick-off meetings and workshops. You’ll be thoughtful, measured, collaborative, good at listening and you’ll get to work in a truly agile methodology.
  
• Help us use visual design to create brilliant user experiences
  You’ll be involved in work through the full design lifecycle – from idea to production. That means you’ll have an opportunity to create anything from ‘design experiments’ to test concepts to interactive prototypes, high-fidelity responsive designs, design systems and visual style guides. Working with other more senior team members, you’ll validate your designs with the people who will use them by assisting in user research (generative research and usability testing) and analysing findings to help guide your design decisions.
  
• Help to set direction, interpret and evolve our clients’ brands
  You’ll interpret our clients’ brand guidelines into digital design and develop their brand identity across digital channels. You’ll work with our Senior Designers and Creative Director to help set design direction (from visual design ideas to dummy brands and brand enhancement), coming up with ideas and pushing the client’s brand where appropriate.
  
• Develop and explain credible rationale
  Explain and rationalise the decisions that informed your designs (both internally and to our client during Playbacks and Workshops), articulating the thought processes that you went through and foreseeing likely issues. You’ll have great communication skills, the ability to listen and articulate complex visual ideas clearly and vividly.
  
• Create designs that can be built
  You’ll work with developers to ensure the quality of our designs and prototypes is maintained throughout the production workflow, and that their development teams have everything they need. You’ll be able to grasp what is required, and deliver it efficiently and on time.
  
• Manage the quality of our work
  You’ll be committed to provide the best quality of designs. You’ll make sure any documentation produced by our team is of the highest quality.

• More than 2 years experience in the industry and / or tip top design qualifications. In-house and agency backgrounds are both welcome.
• Proficiency in design tools such as Figma (our preferred tool), Sketch and Adobe Creative Suite – including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.
• An innovative, creative mindset, passion for problem solving and creating clean, highly usable designs.
• Some knowledge and practical experience of user-centred design methodology.
• Experience delivering high-fidelity, dev-ready designs to developers.
• Experience of designing beautiful, purposeful user interfaces for websites and apps.
• Great communication skills, with strong emotional intelligence, sensitivity and an understanding of how to build lasting, collaborative relationships.
• A level of natural authority to ensure clients listen to you, and people respond to you.
• The ability to work with our research team, who will plan and conduct both remote user research and also usability testing with real users.
• To be able to see the big picture as well as pay attention to the detail.
• To be action-oriented, proactive and comfortable working rapidly and pragmatically to tight deadlines.
• To be interested in and have a good understanding of technology, in particular UI trends and current design strategy in the areas of graphic design, information architecture and interaction design.
• Great written and interpersonal skills.
• The right to live and work in the UK.

These things would be a plus but are not essential:

• Experience in building and maintaining design systems.
• Experience of creating brand identities and accompanying guidelines.
• Experience working in a 'lean' way, in small, cross-disciplinary design sprint teams.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies.

• 25 days holiday plus the option to buy/ sell 4 extra days per year
• MacBook laptop and iPhone with call plan
• A generous hobby fund and a personal training budget of £750 per annum
• ‘Remote first’ working model (with offices in London and Bristol available for team meetings and social events)
• Flexible working
• Cash-back healthcare scheme with Simply Health
• Pension plan with 5% contribution from cxpartners
• Life insurance
• Support with a cxpartners buddy when you join
• Enhanced maternity and adoption pay
• Up to 2 weeks extra unpaid leave (after one year’s full service)

Last year cxpartners was officially recognised as a ‘Great Place to Work®’. We were awarded the sought-after certification and received a 90% overall Trust Index© from our team. And in 2023 we did even better! We are absolutely thrilled to report a 95% overall Trust Index© from our wonderful colleagues, which is well above the UK average.

Some of our favourite insights from our team’s ratings include:

• 100% said ‘I would strongly recommend my organisation to friends and family as a great place to work’
• 100% said ‘management trusts people to do a good job without watching over their shoulders’
• 100% said ‘our customers would rate the services and products we deliver as excellent’
• 100% said ‘management is honest and ethical in its business practices’
• 100% said ‘people care about each other here’
• 100% said ‘taking everything into account, I would say this is a great place to work’
• 98% said ‘people are encouraged to balance their work life and personal life’
• 98% said ‘I feel I make a difference here’

Take a look at our blog, cxpartners is an (even better!) 'Great Place to Work' to find out more.

If you’d like to apply, please email tamlyn.driver@cxpartners.co.uk with a brief CV, your design portfolio and a covering letter.