Senior UX Design Officer

The Digital Innovation for Student Success (DISS) team is expanding its design capability to meet increasing demand for high-quality, human-centred digital services across the University. We are seeking a Senior UX & Design Officer with strong skills in UX design, prototyping, and research to help shape intuitive, evidence-led experiences for students and staff.

This role will address the need for front-end design and interactive prototyping of digital products to make early concepts tangible, accelerate decision-making, and support strategic initiatives such as AI-enabled services, CRM transformation and other student experience innovation initiatives.

As a Senior UX & Design Officer, you will contribute to discovery, definition, and design phases, collaborating across UX research, content, development, data, and product functions to deliver outstanding, user-centred outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

1 UX Design & Prototyping

• Design high-fidelity, interactive prototypes (e.g. web & app) to communicate product concepts and support usability testing.
• Create user flows, wireframes, interaction patterns, and interface components aligned with emerging standards.
• Translate research insights into meaningful design decisions that support user needs and service goals.
• Work closely with developers to clarify design intent and bridge design-to-implementation.

2 User Research & Insight

• Plan and conduct mixed-methods research (interviews, usability tests, contextual inquiry, surveys).
• Lead or facilitate user engagement activities (ideation, co-creation, prototyping, alignment).
• Synthesise findings into artefacts such as personas, journey maps, problem statements, and MVPs.
• Contribute to and maintain a repository of UX artefacts.

3 Strategic & Professional Contribution

• Provide clear progress updates and concise reporting to support leadership decision making.
• Work independently and collaboratively to plan, prioritise, and deliver high-quality UX outputs with minimal supervision.
• Demonstrate sound judgement in balancing user needs, service outcomes, technical constraints, and delivery timelines.
• Contribute to a positive, proactive team culture through constructive collaboration and a continuous-improvement mindset.

Why Join Us?

Join a growing UX & Design function at a pivotal moment in digital transformation. You'll shape student-facing digital experiences, work with a multidisciplinary team, and influence product direction through research, design, and high-fidelity prototypes.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Applied UX experience across research, design, and prototyping.
• Strong interaction design and UI design abilities, with proficiency in modern design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe XD, or equivalents).
• Experience producing high-fidelity prototypes and using them to test, validate, and communicate design concepts.
• Ability to independently lead research and design activities.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills ? visual, verbal, and written.
• Comfortable facilitating workshops and working in multidisciplinary teams.
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and build alignment.

Desirable Attributes

• Experience producing high-fidelity interactive prototypes and working closely with front-end engineers to translate designs into implementable patterns.
• Comfortable discussing front-end code and practical constraints with developers (responsive behaviour, components, accessibility), even if not coding day to day.
• Familiarity with design systems and component libraries, and an ability to design for consistency and scalability.
• Experience designing AI-enabled experiences such as conversational interfaces or AI-assisted workflows, with awareness of key UX considerations and risks (accuracy/hallucinations, bias, privacy, appropriate user guidance).
• Strong grounding in Design Thinking or similar human-centred methods.
• Experience working in Agile or iterative delivery environments using sprints, backlogs, and incremental releases.
• Experience designing complex digital services in large organisations, navigating multiple stakeholder groups and governance processes.
• Interest in EdTech, higher education and improving the student experience, with curiosity about emerging technology and AI-enabled services.
• Relevant additional qualifications or advanced training (e.g., service design, accessibility certification, postgraduate study in HCI/UX).

Education:

Essential

No formal qualification required. Your portfolio will be the primary evidence of your skills and experience.

Desirable

• Degree or equivalent training in a relevant field (e.g., HCI, UX, Interaction Design, Service Design, Psychology, Digital/Product Design, or similar).
• Accessibility training or certification (e.g., IAAP CPACC or equivalent), and/or demonstrated applied accessibility work.
• Additional UX / service design training (e.g., NN/g, IDEO U, or similar).