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

About this role 

This role sits within Digital Services which is aligned with the Digital, Data and Design Profession which provides for communities of practice which supports professional development. The focus of this role will be to lead the content strategy, and the creation and management of user centred content across services and products to ensure the best possible outcomes for our users. 

This role of Lead Content Designer sits within the Design Profession in Digital Services and reports into the Head of UX, Interaction and Content Design.  

Your main accountability will be the vision, strategy and design of content across services that are especially complex, high risk or sensitive. You will also be responsible for the development of the Open University’s wider content design strategy. They will line manage Senior content designers and support their professional development in line with DDaT professional framework.
 

Key Responsibilities

As a Lead Content Designer at the Open University, you will:

• Lead content design, strategy and information architecture across a service area containing multiple agile teams, working in collaboration with senior leadership and teams to ensure the service meets user needs, and aligns with and feeds into the organisational content strategy.
• Lead on the development and application of content and format strategies that work across the OU’s content and service landscape, in line with industry best practice, collaborating with other disciplines as required to implement these strategies.
• Lead and coach more junior content designers to design and improve content within a service, and design and improve content across more complex services or service areas with a strategic and holistic mindset
• Champion usability, accessibility, accuracy and consistency in content design
• Create space and right conditions for good content design within teams, and across a service area.
• Lead teams and other content designers to identify the needs of users and how well content is performing using analytics, user feedback, user research and other sources of information, to inform content design decisions.
• Enable content designers to identify and collaborate effectively with stakeholders and subject matter experts in the content design process.
• Line manage other content designers, supporting their professional development, providing pastoral care and supporting them to do their best work within their teams.
• Establish, maintain and improve team processes, templates and guidance to ensure content design consistency and best practice across style, accessibility, and usability.
• Lead in the development and sharing of knowledge and best practice in content design, and support internal stakeholders across the OU on content design, including content management standards and content style guide.
• Be a leader and ambassador of the Open University’s User Centred Design Communities of Practice, contributing to our collective knowledge and skills, and joining up to make the design of our content and services more consistent.  
• Work with leadership to develop the role of content design in holistically improving the OUs products and services, and the organisations approach to being service led and focused on user needs.
• Enable content designers to negotiate, plan, allocate, manage and deliver content design work across your service area, collaborating where needed, while also managing BAU or unplanned content support work.
• Identify capacity and capability gaps in your teams, working closely with senior leadership to fill those gaps, and identify opportunities for specialist learning and development for yourself and others.
• Support other content designers to on board and upskill in content management tools, systems, processes and principles, and manage content management system (CMS) and content tools including permissions.
• 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

The ideal candidate will:

• Know how the internet works, and be able to design content for the internet
• Have extensive experience in designing, improving, and publishing user-centred content 
• Have extensive experience in using analytics, user feedback, user research and other sources of information to understand user needs, assess how content is performing, and make decisions about how to design or improve it 
• Be experienced supporting and coaching other content designers to do their best work
• Have experience in establishing content design best practice within and across teams.
• Be an expert in user centred design principles
• Have extensive experience at applying accessibility and usability requirements to the design and delivery of service content. 
• Show initiative and be curious about how things work, and why, asking the right sorts of questions and challenging assumptions
• Have extensive experience working with content management systems 
• Have excellent communication skills, in verbal and written forms, with a variety of internal and external audiences, using appropriate language and media. 
• Be able to prioritise, plan and deliver content design work, both collaboratively and autonomously away from their team where needed
• Be experienced in leading content design work in an agile environment, dealing with complexity and ambiguity, while ensuring attention to detail and continuous improvement
• Have extensive experience and enjoy collaborating with content designers and other disciplines
• Have extensive experience engaging the whole multidisciplinary team with the content design process 
• Have experience working with stakeholders to understand their issues while maintaining content quality, putting forward the case for and negotiating content design decisions and advocating for user needs.
• Show commitment to continuous personal development of the knowledge and skills related to design and delivery of whole service content.
• 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 
• Have experience developing and implementing content strategies, and improving content processes 
• Have experience in representing content design at internal and external events
   

Essential Requirements

As part of the application process, you will be expected to submit your CV and a Supporting Statement (maximum of 1000 words) that demonstrates how you meet the criteria listed above. 

Flexible working 

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.

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. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We anticipate this being once or twice a month on average.

*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.