Senior Interaction Designer c. £62,500 per annum Bedford Based Hybrid Working Permanent As a Senior Interaction Designer at Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), you will be responsible for improving engagement, customer satisfaction and ultimately the financial wellbeing of millions of people across the UK, particularly those with vulnerabilities. Working within a multi-disciplinary team, you will use your interaction design skills to ensure our digital products and services are desirable, effective, usable, accessible and inclusive. You will also work with the rest of UCD team to champion and evolve the practice of user centred design at MaPS and align it with the GDS Service Standard. Your design skills and experience will help MaPS achieve our mission of helping everyone in the UK make the most of their money and pensions. At this role level, you will work with service managers and programme directors to develop design concepts, potentially have responsibility across complex services, help set direction and embed good practice within teams and make important decisions based on research and understand how this research impacts others. This role is aligned with DDaT Senior interaction designer - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/interaction-designersenior-interaction-designer Here is an insight to Money and Pension Service: At the heart of the Money and Pensions Service are our values – caring, connecting and transforming, which are the foundation of our success. They permeate every area of our work and define all our business relationships and the way we work with each other. We’re not only looking for the best people to come and work for us, but we need people who align themselves to our values. We care about our colleagues and people whose lives we are here to transform, we will transform lives through our ability to make positive connections, and we are committed to transforming lives and make a positive societal impact. We help people – particularly those most in need – to improve their financial wellbeing and build a better, more confident future. Working collaboratively across the UK, we make sure customers can access high-quality money and pensions guidance and debt advice throughout their lives, however and whenever they need it. By fostering our values, we are very proud of the inclusive working environment that we have created. We are committed to attracting people of all backgrounds, we want our colleagues to reflect our customers and the people we assist. In this role you will be responsible for the following; · Guiding a collaborative design process for multiple or complex projects. · Leading workshops, reviews, critiques and handovers. · Helping evolve and champion the interaction design practice within MaPS. · Building interaction design capacity within a multi-functional team by sharing insights, principles and best practices with non-designers. · Collaborating with a cross functional team to implement the user experience vision for MaPS’s digital channels. · Advising and teaching colleagues of all levels in your areas of special expertise. · Helping internal colleagues and external delivery partners define and evolve agile ways of working. · Identifying, understanding and mitigating the ways design decisions and processes may negatively impact users, especially those who are vulnerable or experience some form of exclusion. · Working with Business Analysts, Policy and Proposition Managers, and Product Managers to understand business requirements and ensure they are addressed in your designs. · Collaborating with relevant internal teams to ensure our services meet MaPS, DWP and GDS standards for suitability, efficacy, usability, accessibility, quality, security and data protection. · Building prototypes for testing and review. · Identifying and prioritising design assumptions. · Helping user researchers to plan research to gain the insights needed to advance the design. · Working with user researchers and performance analysts to use analytics, customer feedback and other internal and external data to identify areas for improvement and inform designs. · Conducting user experience audits, heuristic evaluations, competitive reviews and other desk research. · Creating and socialising experience maps, process flows and other design artefacts to understand and communicate the customer journey. · Creating design documentation and assets including sketches, wireframes, low and high fidelity prototypes, sitemaps & specification documents. · Helping Product Owners, Policy and Proposition Managers, and Omnichannel Analysts define KPIs and measure the success of our website against them · Performing design quality assurance on the final delivered product or service. Skills needed for this role level: · Agile working: You can identify and compare the best processes or delivery methods to use, including measuring and evaluating outcomes. You can help the team to decide the best approach. You can help teams to manage and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and adhere to agreed minimum viable product (MVP), priorities and scope. · Communicating between the technical and non-technical: You can listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. You can effectively manage stakeholder expectations. You can manage active and reactive communication. You can support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders. · Community collaboration: You can work collaboratively in a group, actively networking with others. You can adapt feedback to ensure it’s effective and lasting. You can use your initiative to identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. You can identify issues through Agile ‘health checks’ with the team, and help to stimulate the right responses. · Digital perspective: You can apply a digital understanding to your work. You can identify and implement solutions for assisted digital. · Evidence and context-based design: You can design systems for use across multiple services and can identify the simplest of a variety of approaches. · Leadership and guidance: You can make decisions characterised by medium levels of risk and complexity and recommend decisions as risk and complexity increase. You can build consensus between services or independent stakeholders. You can identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. You can engage in varying types of feedback, choosing the right type at the appropriate time and ensuring the discussion and decision stick. You can bring people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a team to work in. You can facilitate the best team makeup depending on the situation. · Prototyping: You can use a variety of prototyping methods. You can share best practice and coach others. You can look at strategic service design end to end. · Prototyping in code: You can create and validate a dynamic prototype. · Strategic thinking: You can define strategies and policies, providing guidance to others on working in the strategic context. You can evaluate current strategies to ensure business requirements are being met and exceeded where possible. · User focus: You can give direction on which tools or methods to use. You can demonstrate experience in meeting the needs of users across a variety of channels. You can bring insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure they’re met by the business. You can apply strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user. · Working within constraints: You can identify, communicate and work within constraints. You can challenge the validity of constraints. You can ensure standards are being met. You will need to demonstrate the following skills and experience; The following skills and experience will be helpful in this role. We value people who can bring new perspectives to our teams and encourage you to apply even if you don’t have all of them; Solid interaction design experience (likely to be 5 years or more). Some of this may have been in an adjacent role, such as graphic or UI design, frontend development, product management or customer– or academic research. Comfortable working on projects with several stakeholders in a complex, matrix organisation. Confident working with colleagues of differing seniority to drive consensus in a multi-disciplinary team. Able to balance project work with initiatives to improve the practice of interaction design at MaPS. Able to adapt to iterative requirements while championing good design practices. Comfortable working ‘in the open’ to involve the full team in the design process. Confident presenting solutions to senior stakeholders and addressing feedback. Good understanding of and interest in inclusive design including designing for (and with) users with sensory, motor, cognitive, mental health and fluctuating needs among others. Knowledge of behavioural economics and behavioural psychology and how they can inform design. Experience with Figma, Miro, and Adobe Creative Cloud or equivalent tools. Experience designing to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility guidelines. A basic understanding of accessible, cross-browser front-end development to inform high quality, implementable solutions. Experience with mobile-first, responsive website design. Experience of working with content rich and/or data-intensive websites, ideally for a consumer audience. Experience in the public sector or other regulated field (e.g. financial services, medicine, law) About MaPS At MaPS, we help people – particularly those most in need – to improve their financial wellbeing and build a better, more confident future. Working collaboratively across the UK, we make sure customers can access high-quality money and pensions guidance and debt advice throughout their lives, however and whenever they need it. At the heart of the Money and Pensions Service are our values – caring, connecting and transforming, which are the foundation of our success. They permeate every area of our work and define all our business relationships and the way we work with each other. We’re not only looking for the best people in and around Bedford to come and work for us, but we need people who align themselves to our values: - · Caring We care about our colleagues and people whose lives we are here to transform. · Connecting We will transform lives through our ability to make positive connections. · Transforming We are committed to transforming lives and make a positive societal impact. Our inclusive working environment By fostering our values, we are immensely proud of the inclusive working environment that we have created. The diversity of our people is a strength that we embrace and wish to build upon, so we are committed to attracting people of all backgrounds. We work hard to ensure that we have a progressive approach to inclusion, equity and belonging. We really do want our colleagues to “bring their whole selves to work.” By way of brief example, we have an enviable ethnic diversity mix, equal gender balance with a zero mean gender pay gap and thriving colleague and ally networks, including LGBTQ, neurodiversity, women’s health, men's health, ethnicity, and diversity. What Money and Pensions Service can offer you? · Generous Annual Leave – 30 days plus Bank Holidays · Pension scheme – contributions matched 2 to 1 (up to 10% of your salary) · Interest-free loan to help you buy season tickets for buses and trains · Cycle to work Scheme · Subsidised eye test & flu jabs · Life assurance scheme · Give as you earn scheme · Employee assistance programme (EAP) · PAM Assist and PAM Life scheme (Wellbeing) · Enhanced family and sick pay · Paid volunteering (2 days a year) · Recognition Scheme · Discounts portal to numerous retailers At MaPS, we take pride in our flexible approach to work. Most of our roles can operate on a hybrid basis with a minimum of 2 days in the office per week. Hybrid working is a voluntary, noncontractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business needs. Job Reference: MaPS00729 Close Date: 20/01/2025 Job Types: Full-time, Permanent Pay: £62,500.00 per year Benefits: Company pension Flexitime Health & wellbeing programme On-site parking Sick pay Work from home Schedule: Monday to Friday No weekends Work authorisation: United Kingdom (required) Work Location: Hybrid remote in Leicester, Leicestershire Reference ID: MaPS00729