Design Project Lead

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Design Project Lead (DPL) manages the day-to-day execution of one or several customer design projects in Absa while guiding and developing individual team members. DPL works directly with different business stakeholders and takes ownership of the overall project and the delivery of exceptional customer experience. A successful DPL is a self-starter with a passion for high-quality customer design and has a strong track record of delivering complex, creative, and innovative design projects that elevate the customer experience.

Job Description

Accountability: Project Management
• Engage with business stakeholders to clarify the needs and requirements of the business and, jointly with the Design Director, establish a clear scope, creative brief, and project plan for projects.
• Manage the day-to-day delivery of the design output against the plan, continuously interrogating the design quality and customer experience to deliver high-quality output in each stage of the project.
• Work closely with the business and technical stakeholders to ensure the project aligns to their needs and requirements.
• Take ownership of the customer experience within the project and constructively challenge business and technical decisions to ensure the best possible experience for the customers.
• Lead the project team by aligning, managing, and coaching the designers, prototype engineers, copywriters, and other possible team members, supporting them in setting goals, overcoming obstacles, and delivering outstanding outcomes, while ensuring a fully unified end product.
• Develop and nurture relationships across teams and disciplines to promote collaboration and efficiency.
• Actively seek ways to measure the impact of the design on the customer and business, reporting the insights to senior management and business stakeholders.

Accountability: High Quality Design
• Create creative, innovative, and high-quality design solutions to create a world-class customer experience across the projects in Absa.
• Provide significant contributions to the design within the project, while offering thought leadership to the overall team and business.
• Take ownership in applying design thinking and best practice standards in developing design options and narrowing down the final solution.
• Leverage insight and data, such as market analysis, customer feedback, and user research analytics to ensure that products/services/solutions are truly designed around the customer and deliver improved experience; surface and share insights with the broader team.
• Design scenarios, mock-ups, and prototypes as necessary for each stage of the project, continuously iterating to achieve the optimal output.
• Align the design to the design standards and brand guidelines to ensure a consistent experience for the customer across the Absa ecosystem.

Accountability: Building Capabilities
• Coach and mentor designers in the project team and design office as a whole.
• Foster a team environment in which designers feel engaged and motivated.
• Continuously build your own expertise by, for example, actively seeking and incorporating feedback, and following external trends and best practices.
• Contribute to the knowledge building of the entire team by actively sharing insights and success stories; and providing feedback and ideas across different design projects.

Education and Experience Required
• Degree or diploma in a Design discipline such as product, industrial, service, interaction, digital, or visual design or equivalent qualification (NQF level 4).
• Track record of delivering complex, high-quality design projects, with strong customer impact.
• Two years of experience conducting audience and usability research including benchmarking, heuristic reviews, surveys, analytics, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, contextual inquiry, and usability testing.
• Demonstrated experience in each of the usability and software engineering cycle phases (analysis, design, implementation, and deployment).
• Ability to create and use personas and produce illustrated customer journeys.
• Ability to communicate ideas through drawing, digital tools, prototyping, model making, etc.

Knowledge and Skills: (Maximum of 6)
• Advanced understanding of the whole process of developing digital and service design solutions.
• Great customer obsession – ability to tirelessly drive improvement in customer experience throughout the projects.
• Strong skills in stakeholder management – ability to build strong relationships, communicate effectively, and, when necessary, challenge constructively.
• Problem-solving skills – ability to work tirelessly and think creatively in order to find solutions to problems/issues.
• Understanding of the importance of data and insight in driving solutions and ability to use data in decision-making.
• Awareness of new and emerging design trends and patterns in the customer design space.

Competencies: (Maximum of 8 competencies)
• Ability to provide creative and innovative ideas and concepts to push the thinking on customer experience.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with an ability to work independently and make quick decisions.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Ability to influence and lead others at all levels of the organization.
• Project management/planning skills to ensure projects are delivered on time and on budget.
• Great communicator with strong written and oral communication skills.

Education
Bachelor’s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Physical, Mathematical, Computer, and Life Sciences (Required).

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised.