About the role

At Storio, we Make Joy Unforgettable. Our digital experience enables the creation of high quality personalised photo products - and the Director of Design is responsible for the digital experience itself.  You ensure every interaction our customers have with the digital experience is both usable (users can figure out how to use it) and desirable (users actually want to use it). Your measure of success is the usability of the digital experience across all devices (web and app, mobile and desktop). You need to understand what impacts usability and desirability - and solve the biggest challenges through your team of UX Designers, UX Researchers and Product Creative Designers. 

You collaborate closely with your peers in Product and Engineering - participating in all phases of product development: from discovery to delivery to iteration. You lead an efficient, effective and continuously improving Design team. 

We are starting a new phase in our Company Strategy - to drive growth through innovation - after a period of Simplification following a merger 3 years ago. One of our new Company Goals is to delight through the customer experience, and as the owner of the end-to-end Customer Journey Map, you lead an emerging cross-functional community looking to consciously design and optimise the E2E journey, from the first marketing touchpoint, to choosing the right product and creating it, to any interactions seeking help, and even the wait whilst our factories make the product itself. 

Primary responsibilities

- Vision & Strategy: Define the digital experience vision and strategy, aligned with the Company and Product Strategy. 

- Data Driven Design: Establish goals and target metrics that design decisions can be mapped to. Translate business goals into innovative, creative and engaging product experiences. Utilize data and analytics to measure the effectiveness of design solutions.

- Team Management: Manage, mentor and coach the design team (18 people across UX Designers, UX Research and Product Creative). Hold a high bar for performance, and foster a culture of value creation, collaboration, excellence and continuous improvement. Develop career paths and programs tailored to individual team member professional development.

- Design Execution: Oversee the execution of high-quality designs that solve customer problems and create business value. Lead the team in adopting rapid prototyping practices to test and validate ideas quickly. Guide the team on when to use ecommerce best practise  solutions for ‘already-solved’ problems vs when to bold and visionary solutions are required.

- Data driven insights: Accountable for gaining, applying and sharing a deep understanding of user needs into actionable insight.

- Design Practise: Build, evolve and scale modern UX processes, standards, and tools. Lead the day-to-day and strategic activities of the Design community.

- E2E Customer Experience: Lead a cross-functional community of leaders collectively accountable for the E2E Customer Experience with the goal of delighting customers at every touchpoint. Recommend an operating model that.

- Stay Ahead: Keep up-to-date with the latest design trends, technologies, and best practices, and share that knowledge with the team.

What You Bring to the Party

• • Extensive amount of Design experience, ideally across multiple design disciplines (UI/UX, Research, Service design etc). Likely to be at Director/ Head of level.
  • Vast Design Leadership experience as a Design Director/Head of Design, of a large (15+) team of designers and researchers (hiring, mentoring and coaching).
  • Strong experience of mobile and web design in an ecommerce or digital product environment.
  • Examples of influential UX work that contributed directly to the achievement of business goals.
  • Excellent communication skills and interpersonal skills.
  • Experience of leading and influencing successfully across the organization - at an Executive, cross-functional peer, and manager level.
  • Ability to articulate design decisions and advocate for the user.

Extra Kudos for Experience

• • Experience at companies where Design is highly valued and successfully continues to improve the customer experience ie somewhere that ‘gets the value of Design’.
  • A background in service design, with an understanding of end-to-end customer journey mapping.
  • Influential in the broader design community.
  • Experience managing teams spread across Europe.
  • An expert in facilitating Discovery processes eg Design Sprints.
  • Manager of manager experience