About the Role

We believe that where you start in life, shouldn’t limit where you go.

The Open University is a unique institution created 50 years ago to open up education for all. We are open to anyone, anywhere, changing millions of lives across the world and always looking for new ways to help people succeed. Our pioneering use of innovative methods, such as our BBC partnership, means we reach more people than any other university.

We work across all four nations of the UK and we are the most popular choice for online, distance, flexible study.

This role sits within Academic Services but is aligned to other content teams across the University through communities of practice which support professional development. The focus of this role will be to support the creation and management of user centred content – content needed by our staff to support our students and enquirers.  

The Open University is evolving how we improve our services – embedding a service led, agile and user-centred approach. 

Key Responsibilities

As a content designer at the Open University, you will:

• Collaborate in a multi-disciplinary service team to reduce complexity and improve service outcomes
• Create, improve and manage user-centred content across a whole service, ensuring usability, accessibility, accuracy and consistency
• Provide content design and editorial support to other team members, for example in documenting and sharing work and ideas
• Identify, collaborate effectively with and influence stakeholders and subject matter experts
• Plan and manage content tasks, from writing user stories to detailed content plans, collaborating where needed
• Identify the needs of users using analytics, user feedback, user research and other sources of information, to inform content design decisions
• Be an active member of the Open University’s User Centred Design Community of Practice, contributing to our collective knowledge and skills, and joining up to make the design of our content and services more consistent
• Help to establish, maintain and improve team processes, templates, guidelines standards to ensure content design consistency and best practice across style, accessibility, and usability
• Contribute to, influence and share knowledge and best practice and support internal stakeholders across the OU on content design, including content management standards and content style guide
• Plan and deliver content design work across your service area, while also managing BAU or unplanned content support work
• Keep up to date in developments in user centred design, content design, trends and technologies, and share with the wider content design team to build a deep understanding and appreciation of best practice in this field
   

Skills and Experience

Essential 

• Have experience in designing, prototyping, improving, and publishing user-centred content
• Have experience of using data and evidence to understand user needs, monitor content performance and identify ways to improve the service
• Be able to demonstrate an understanding of user centred design principles
• Have an appreciation for accessibility and usability requirements in the design and delivery of user centred content
• Have good communication skills, and be able to explain ideas in a way that other people understand
• Have experience and enjoy collaborating with content designers and other disciplines
• Have experience working with content management systems
• Have experience working at pace while ensuring attention to detail and continuous improvement
• Show commitment to continuous personal development of the knowledge and skills related to content design
• Show commitment to equality and diversity, which is key to fulfilling the University’s mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas.     
• Welcome the constructive criticism of their work and be able to constructively review the work of others
• Be interested in representing content design at internal and external events
• Show initiative and be curious about how things work, and why, asking the right sorts of questions and challenging assumptions to unpack complex problems and generate creative solutions

Essential Requirements

•  
• Personal statement, up to 1000 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job and person specification

Contract: This is a fixed term contract until 31st July 2027

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. Candidates can be based out of any of our UK offices, however, the team meet once per quarter on site in Manchester and attendance is expected (flexibility is required in response to business needs)

We are open to discussions about flexible working, whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what may work for you and the role.

Early closing date notification

We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.