User Experience Designer– Bloomsbury
Job Title
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User Experience Designer
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Office Location
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London (Nearest Tube station Russell Square)
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Office/WFH Split
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Hybrid – days in the office Weds and Thursday , Hours 9-5
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Salary
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Upto £40,000
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Notes from Deerfoot IT’s Discussion with the Hiring Manager
The User Experience Designer will report to Bloomsbury Head of UX, and will contribute to the definition, implementation and delivery of all Bloomsbury Digital Resources across Bloomsbury Academic, Professional and Special Interest divisions. Bloomsbury Digital Resources have already won a number of accolades for the quality of design and usability, often receiving glowing reviews from leading publications and customers. This role will build on that success by ensuring that we continue to deliver engaging, accessible products and an excellent user experience to the students and researchers within our global customer base of academic institutions
The UX designer will help build our evidence-based design practices, enabling short—and long-term innovation in our platform development. The role will collaborate closely with the Product Management and Technology teams, developing, evaluating, and iterating the user experience together.
The ideal candidate will have:
Demonstrated experience of user experience work
Ability to understand the specific needs of a varied user base of students, scholars, librarians and practitioners in visual and applied arts, performing arts, humanities, social sciences, law and finance
Cross-functional team collaboration, including stakeholder management
A proactive, “can-do” attitude, with a keen curiosity and willingness to learn
An excellent eye for detail and nuance and a logical, problem-solving approach
Contractual Benefits
Holiday: 25 days holiday per annum plus bank holidays.
Pension: Company contribution depending on age (min. employee contribution = 5%)
Life Assurance: three x annual salary.
Discretionary Benefits
Discretionary Company Bonus: up to 6% dependant on company performance
Hybrid Working: hybrid working pattern of two days office based/ three days home based (or fully office based if preferred). Allocated office days are: Wednesday and Thursday
Flexible Fridays: take Friday afternoon off by working an additional 3 hours and 45 minutes earlier in the week.
Work Anywhere Fortnight - For two weeks of any calendar year. The minimum period for Working Anywhere is one week, the maximum period is two weeks.
Christmas Office Closure: 3.5 days Christmas company holiday
Personal Wellness Days: 2 Personal Wellness Days per annum
Staff Discount: 50-70% off purchase price Season Ticket Loan Sharesave Scheme Ride to Work (bicycle scheme)
AXA Healthcare Plan (Private Medical Insurance - auto enrolment taxable benefit) Peppy Health App
In-house Doctor Eyecare Voucher Scheme EAP Advice and Counselling service
Learning & Development Initiatives
Company culture – Employee Voice Meetings, Staff Networks (Bloom (BAME), Accessibility, Mental Health, Pride, and Parents, Guardians and Carers, Multi-Faith), 21 Mental Health First Aiders trained across the UK offices, Publishing Events and access to free Publishing Resources
MAIN PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
Ensure that the Bloomsbury Digital Resources academic platforms deliver an excellent user
experience to the students and researchers within our global customer base of academic institutions.
As part of the Digital Development team and reporting to Bloomsbury Head of UX, this role
contributes to the definition, implementation and delivery of all Bloomsbury Digital Resources
across Bloomsbury Academic, Professional and Special Interest divisions. Bloomsbury Digital
Resources have already won a number of accolades for the quality of design and usability, often
receiving glowing reviews from leading publications and customers. This role will build on that
success by ensuring that we continue to deliver engaging, accessible products.
The UX designer will help introduce evidence-based design practices, enabling short- and longterm innovation in our platform development. The role will be collaborate closely with the
Product Management and Technology teams. Together they will develop, evaluate, and iterate
the user experience.
Key Responsibilities
- Run user experience research to understand our users’ journeys and needs, deciding on the
- best method to use (e.g. interviews, focus groups, card sorting, usage analytics)
- Capture findings from user experience research and translate into clear designs and
- prioritised in documentation, whether for roadmap or immediate development
- Produce designs (sketches, wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes, as appropriate)
- to assist with user research, internal discussion, presentations to stakeholders, and delivery
- Work on a programme of continuous improvement, encompassing interface design within a
- tested and established design language, basic UX writing, usability testing, and interaction
- flows
- Work with Editorial leads and Product Managers on new product proposals to identify new
- feature requirements
- Specify and clarify requirements for developers with regard to Bloomsbury Platforms,
- working closely with external and internal teams
- Review built designs whilst they are in the test environment to ensure they meet the
- specified design
- Analyse web usage data to understand and measure user engagement and optimize user
- journeys
- Act as the internal team expert for our analytics tools (training provided)
- Benchmark competitors against our platforms, in order to remain market-leading for user
- experience and user engagement
- Proactively ensure that all Bloomsbury Digital Resources platforms comply with established
- and emerging accessibility criteria
- Identify improvements to the team’s processes and workflow
- Promote the importance of User Experience within the wider company
PERSON SPECIFICATION - Knowledge, qualifications and experience
- A proactive, “can-do” attitude, with a keen curiosity and willingness to learn
- An excellent eye for nuance and a logical, problem-solving approach
- Demonstrated experience of user experience work, including research and prototyping (we
- currently use Figma)
- Cross-functional team collaboration, including stakeholder management
- Ability to understand the specific needs of a varied user base of students, scholars, librarians
- and practitioners in visual and applied arts, performing arts, humanities, social sciences, law
- and finance
- Passion for digital product design, with a proven record of helping deliver successful products
- and platform features
- Excellent implementation and time-management skills
- Excellent communication skills (written, verbal and visual)
Nice to haves:
- Understanding of project management & development processes, including Agile
- methodology, and experience with standard tools such as Jira and Confluence
- Experience of gathering & interpreting web usage analytics
- Understanding of sustainable web design principle
Why Apply through Deerfoot?
- We provide an impartial and consultative service that centres on equipping you with comprehensive and trustworthy insights regarding opportunities, devoid of any manipulative or coercive techniques.
- Client-side stakeholders place their confidence in our market knowledge and unbiased approach, leading to the attainment of impressive CV submission to interview/offer ratios. Candidates represented by Deerfoot stand out distinctly rather than getting lost in the crowd.
- Our efforts are dedicated to securing the optimal outcome on your behalf. Upon reaching the offer stage, we skilfully engage in diplomatic negotiations to ensure the most favourable salary or day rate is achieved.
- For over two decades, we have undergone annual audits by BSI (the global leader in business process standards), consistently achieving the BSI 9001 Quality Standard without fail.
- As a REC Corporate Member, which is the recognised trade body for our industry, we firmly adhere to and uphold their code of Professional Practice
- With every candidate's CV that we present to a recruiting client, we contribute £1 to the Born Free Foundation.
- Since 2020, we have operated as a climate action workforce through Ecologi, effectively offsetting the entire carbon footprint of all our employees.
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