Digital Design Manager (10 month ftc) - Manchester or Glasgow

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The Team

The Digital Learning and Platforms (DL&P) team comprises a Digital Design team and a Platforms team who provide leadership and operational services to 10 key internal customer groups and experience design solutions for key business initiatives. The Digital Design team focuses on applying design thinking to create user-centric learning experiences and workplace performance solutions for an expanding global law firm.

The Design team works on the end-to-end process for large-scale global/regional projects and smaller bespoke digital solutions. As the interim Design team manager, you will work collaboratively with team members, stakeholders, and end-users to understand the core problems we are trying to solve and design highly creative solutions. You will also work collaboratively with the Platforms team, as the combination of our platforms and technologies can be used to further research, analyze, and measure activities to help inform learning design solutions and their impact.

We are modern thinkers, whose design strategy is strongly influenced by the 5Di process, Design Thinking, human-centered design, and 5 Moments of Learning Need. We place the user at the heart of our activity and create cohesive multi-channel experience solutions appropriate to end-user needs, context, and performance results. We want to be able to help people do their jobs better.

The Role

This is an interim role (10 months) for an innovative design thinker with strong human-centered experience design, content authoring, and creative design production skills to work with and manage a progressive forward-thinking team.

The Design team comprises a Senior Digital Learning Designer and Senior Digital Experience Designer. We intend to backfill recruit two Digital Designer positions to support the internal production of creative digital assets (animations, video, digital learning, internal web design, comms campaigns & collateral, etc.).

Furthermore, we have several third-party vendor partnerships where we choose to outsource discreet items of work (animations, video shoots, build of digital learning, translation services) or whole projects (design & build).

As the interim Design Manager, you will take a lead role in the day-to-day operations of your direct reports, prioritization and allocation of work, and ensuring the production of assets internal or externally produced are delivered to agreed project timelines and high quality. As the team will be going through a number of changes internally, you will need to be able to support your team through these changes while helping to carry forward the team's vision and standard of quality.

You will be the first point of contact for stakeholders and key in managing stakeholder relationships. You will need to help bring stakeholders on the journey to understand our design thinking and end-user approach to solution design. Helping them to understand the value and impact of fully following this approach through the define, discover, and design phases to properly define the business problem, the desired behavior change, agree how that will be measured, and gather end-user research to then design a solution that will actually create measurable behavior change. Often a course, or at least not solely a 'training course', is the right solution.

The team works collaboratively with business stakeholders and SMEs to co-create learning experience solutions, including, but not limited to, digital courses and resources, internal comms and engagement campaigns, and UX/UI design for internal intranet sites. We may also work with stakeholders to suggest and support the implementation of other interventions to support behavior change. The content and approach will vary based upon the need, desired performance result, and end-user research. Subject domains span risk & compliance, sustainability, leadership and professional skills development to legal training, diversity & inclusion, people/process change, and more.

The successful candidate will be someone who has hands-on design and art direction experience and is strong using both design software and tools. At times, especially until backfill roles for designers are filled, you will need to be able to get stuck in producing high-quality design work yourself, while also overseeing the work of internal and external designers through providing art direction feedback. You will need a keen eye for layout design, typography, information hierarchy, and dynamic photography and videography. You will also need to fully understand and champion the implementation of our brand standards.

We are looking for someone who is confident and articulate, who understands design thinking, 5Di, human-centered design, experience design, and innovative learning principles and can apply this in their work and lead the team to create engaging, impactful learning experiences.

You will work collaboratively with design team members through research, ideation, prototyping, and delivery of creative design solutions. You will be able to follow the 5Di process to facilitate workshops with stakeholders, SMEs, and end-users.

As part of the role, you will design and build visually compelling, high-impact interactive learning modules primarily using our collaborative authoring platform - Elucidat. We also advise and assist with the UX/UI and information architecture of SharePoint sites where appropriate for achieving the desired behavior change and creating at the point of need resources and tools.

We respect, value, and embrace our cultural and regional diversity. As you will be designing for a global audience, you will also need to understand working cross-culturally and apply cultural sensitivity and awareness to your work. You will understand and embed inclusive (in all respects) and accessible design in all aspects of your work.

Key Responsibilities

This describes a range of activities and responsibilities you may be required to do or develop in this role.

• Lead and manage the Digital Design Team, conducting regular 1:1s and supporting individual development needs through coaching, feedback, and experience sharing.
• Stakeholder management
• Project and resource management of deliverables, supported by senior team members.
• Regular check-ins with third-party vendors to give awareness on the future pipeline of work, ensure in-flight projects deliver well, and following delivery, discuss lessons learned for continuous improvement.
• Working with stakeholders and senior team members to define the scope of a project and then propose and deliver creative learning experience design solutions.
• Conduct end-user, stakeholder, and SME research.
• Provide art direction feedback to design team and external third-party designers.
• Recommend changes to content or delivery methods and approaches, based on information such as desired performance outcomes, end-user research, feasibility, or other factors.
• Ensure written copy has the end user in mind using clear English writing principles and storytelling. Provide recommendations with SME or designer written copy where ease of readability and simplicity could be improved.
• Apply innovative learning principles to produce impactful digital learning experiences informed by UX research and UX design principles.
• Work with global stakeholders to design for a global audience.
• Work with our 3rd party translation partner or internal translation teams to translate projects.
• Work with SMEs and direct reports to create marketing materials to support a campaign-based approach to promotions, learning, and behavior change.
• Design and create a range of high-quality digital assets yourself as needed to support the team.
• Consider measurement tools and work with SMEs to evaluate the performance outcomes of learning experience design interventions.
• Facilitate team brainstorming and planning sessions to get the most creative ideas out of team members while contributing creative ideas yourself.
• Stay abreast of the latest trends and industry standards and share knowledge with the broader team and spheres of influence - be a thought leader.
• Perform other duties and projects as assigned or as responsibilities dictate.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Team management experience including remote/hybrid management of team members.
• Change management experience.
• Art direction experience.
• Able to communicate and collaborate well in a hybrid working environment.
• Project management experience.
• Articulate and effective communicator.
• Strong graphic, multi-media, and instructional design skills with experience creating a range of content (style, modality, and audience).
• Design thinker - understands design thinking process and theory (human-centric design, creative problem-solving).
• Understands and can follow the 5Di process/methodology.
• User-focused at the core in all aspects of design.
• Continuous improvement - growth mindset - curious.
• Cross-cultural communication skills with an understanding and sensitivity to creating culturally appropriate and inclusive design solutions for a diverse global audience.

Software: previous experience with these or similar products

• Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.
• Digital Learning Authoring using a market-leading tool (e.g. Elucidat, Adapt, Evolve, GoMo, Articulate 360).
• Collaborate and track projects using MS Teams and Miro.
• Animation and video authoring tools (Vyond, Synthesia) is a plus.
• Building webpages using SharePoint.

Business Services Competencies

Clyde & Co is committed to providing extensive, personal, and professional development opportunities for our people enabling them to be highly effective in their current role as well as assisting them to fulfill their career aspirations.

The competencies are used to inform all aspects of Business Services career development. They vary across levels and different business areas and fall under the following areas:

• Technical Excellence.
• People and Team.
• Client/Stakeholder Relationships.
• Service Delivery and Commercial Awareness.
• Personal Effectiveness.

This is the job description as constituted at present; however, the Firm reserves the right to reasonably amend it in accordance with the changing needs of the business.

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