Experience Designer

Higlo; City of Edinburgh; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Higlo is building the AI era's connected device for families, with the Hearth above the TV and a Shared Imagination Engine that turns ideas into rooms, activities and games. We’re seeking an Experience Designer to own the imagination layer and the wraparound experience.

You'll design across interaction, game-like experiences, and on-device flows, prototype in code with agents, and collaborate closely with founders and engineers to shape a cohesive family experience in Edinburgh and beyond.

Qualifications

• Background in design across interaction, product, game, or experience design.
• Strong portfolio showing taste and range.
• Ability to build and prototype with agents in real code.
• Experience or interest in prompt engineering or LLM orchestration.
• Hands-on use of generative AI tools (image, video, sound, 3D) as part of design practice.

Responsibilities

• Lead the imagination layer design for the Shared Imagination Engine.
• Invent and design activities, games, and rituals for Higlo rooms.
• Design entry/exit flows for shared spaces and wake/transition gestures.
• Own end-to-end on-device experience, from overlay to content sharing.
• Build prototypes in code with agents and ship validated ideas.
• Generate concepts with AI tools and test with real families.
• Set and maintain the aesthetic across visuals, motion, sound, and interaction.
• Collaborate closely with founders and engineers.

Skills

Interaction design

Product design

Game design

Creative direction

Tools

JS/Node

Python

React

Job description

Hey! We're team Higlo

We're building the AI era's connected device for families. A new way for households to see, talk, and create experiences together across generations.

The physical part of our product, the Hearth, sits above the TV. The Hearth is a powerful device with a pair of 4K wide-angle cameras and a microphone array, that lets families connect naturally together, as groups. You control it with gestures and voice — lift your hand to wake it, pinch your fingers to step into a shared space with your family. Inside, families talk, play, and build things together using our Shared Imagination Engine, a generative AI system that turns families' ideas and voices into playful, shared worlds — rooms to be in, activities to do, games to play, things to make together.

We're a small, multidisciplinary team designing technology that prioritises creativity over consumption. We're looking for a designer to own the whole experience of being inside Higlo — with the Shared Imagination Engine at the centre, and every surface around it as part of one continuous journey.

The Role

We're looking for an Experience Designer to lead the imagination layer of Higlo, and the experience that wraps around it.

The Shared Imagination Engine is the heart of what families do here — the generative system through which they create rooms, activities, games, and shared experiences together. You'll lead its design and creative direction: what gets generated, how families steer it, how an experience feels once it's been made, what the medium can become.

The Imagination Engine doesn't live in isolation. The way a hand lifts and the Hearth wakes, the way a gesture takes a family from their living room into a shared space, the way the home overlay sets the mood, the way a call feels, the way content gets shared and viewed, the way families step back out again at the end — all of this is part of the same experience, the same fabric. You'll design across all of it, with one coherent point of view.

We care a lot about activities and games — the actual things families do once they're in a room together. Inventing them, designing how they unfold, making them feel worth coming back to is a big part of this role.

This is a designer-led role, but in our team the line between designer, engineer, and product is blurring fast. You'll spend a meaningful part of your time building, not just designing — prototyping your own ideas in real code with agents at your side, working hands‑on with the LLM systems and prompt pipelines behind the imagination engine, integrating your work into the running product. There's a highly experienced engineering team around you to back you up on the harder stuff, but we want someone who lives in that blur rather than handing across it.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the experience direction of the Shared Imagination Engine — what we generate, how families steer it, how a created experience feels — and work hands‑on with the LLM systems, prompt pipelines, and evals underneath it
• Invent and design the activities, games, and rituals families do inside a Higlo room — the things that make this medium worth coming back to
• Design how families enter and exit shared spaces — the hand‑control gestures, the wake, the transitions, the way a room appears and dissolves
• Design the on‑device experience end‑to‑end — home overlay, in‑call experience, content sharing, the ambient mood of the Hearth itself
• Build, don't just sketch — take ideas from concept to working prototype yourself, with agents, in real code, and ship the ones that prove out
• Generate concepts fast with AI tools — image, video, sound, 3D, LLMs — test with real families, leave the bad ideas, ship the good ones
• Set and hold the aesthetic bar across everything we ship — visual, motion, sound, interaction
• Partner closely with founders and engineers — and live in the same code with them, not on the other side of a handoff

This is an unusual role — part interaction designer, part game designer, part creative director, part concept artist, part builder. You'll touch every visible part of the product, and you'll set the standard for how it feels.

As a Person, You…

• Are a designer with strong, opinionated taste — you know what good looks like and you can argue for it
• Build as well as design — with AI as your co‑pilot, you can take an idea from sketch to working prototype yourself, in real code, and you don't see engineering as someone else's job
• Love generative AI as a creative material and a building partner — image, video, sound, 3D, LLMs, agents
• Are curious about families, kids, and what is means to play across generations at distance
• Want to invent activities and games that people tell their friends about
• Move fast: concept → prototype → kill it → next

Your Background Looks Something Like

• A design background in one or more of: interaction design, product design, game design, concept art, creative direction, theatre or experience design
• A portfolio that shows real taste and range — work you'd be proud to show without having to explain it
• You build things, not just design them — with agents at your side, you can take an idea from concept to working prototype in real code. JS/Node, Python, React, or anything else you reach for — the language matters less than the willingness and the chops to build
• Experience or strong interest in prompt engineering, LLM orchestration, or agent / tool-use frameworks — design leadership of the imagination engine means working hands‑on with the system, alongside the engineering team
• Hands‑on use of generative AI tools as part of your design practice — image, video, sound, 3D, LLMs

About the Opportunity

This is a chance to define the feel of a new category of family product — not just what it looks like, but what people actually do inside it. You'll work closely with the founders and engineers, set the aesthetic and experience direction of the whole product, and have unusually broad ownership for a design role.

We offer competitive salary and meaningful equity, and we work flexibly — a mix of from home and in‑person in our Edinburgh office.

If this sounds like you — if your taste is sharp, you build as well as you design, and you love the idea of inventing what families do together in a brand-new medium — we'd love to talk.