Lead Product Designer: App

Old Mutual; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 500,000 - 900,000; Full time

Job summary

Old Mutual is looking for a Lead Product Designer to create intuitive user experiences across app platforms. This role involves user research, product design, and collaboration with cross-functional teams in an Agile environment to drive impactful design solutions. Successful candidates will have strong design skills and the ability to lead junior designers.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in product design with leadership experience.
• Proficiency in user research methodologies and visual design.
• Experience in an Omni-Channel Digital and Agile environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead user research and testing for design initiatives.
• Facilitate design thinking sessions and conduct user research.
• Collaborate closely with product managers and engineering.

Skills

Application Development

Creative Design

User Experience (UX) Design

Education

NQF Level 7 - Degree or equivalent

Tools

Figma

Sketch

Adobe Creative Suite

Job description

Let's Write Africa's Story Together!

Old Mutual is a firm believer in the African opportunity and our diverse talent reflects this.

Job Description

As a Lead Product designer, the individual is accountable for creating intuitive user experiences across our app platforms, delivering exceptional design solutions and supporting their product design lead with impactful problem solving. They work within collaborative, cross disciplinary teams, drawing on insights from product managers, engineers, data scientists and design partners such as CX, content, research and service design, while also having the opportunity to present and engage with stakeholders.

You will apply design thinking, UX and UI skills to design solutions from products and features, using your knowledge of user-centred design and platforms to deliver cohesive, impactful user experiences that drive business outcomes. Actively engaged in Agile sprints, you collaborate closely with the Product Design Lead and the product designers in the space to ensure timely design and delivery of high-quality features.

Having built solid experience and skills in product design, you have the autonomy to lead initiatives or major tasks within the overall design project or workstream, reporting into the senior product designer, and directing the efforts of more junior product designers.

Key Responsibilities:

User Research and Simulation Testing

• Define the requirements for user research and testing within a design initiative in conjunction with the senior product designer and supported by the research and simulation practice.
• Ensure that all the documentation required by research ops and by the research / testing methodologies Old Mutual follows are completed to quality.
• Build research and testing plans and refine them with stakeholders to approval.
• Facilitate research / testing sessions according to best practice standards and in line with research objectives and plans.
• Analyse data, build reports and models and present impactful insight into design teams for design direction and improvement.

Product UX/UI Design

• Facilitate design thinking sessions and stakeholder interviews to generate understanding of design context from business and technology stakeholders.
• Execute design discoveries to understand the problems and opportunities faced by business and customer within a specific context.
• Conduct user research leveraging best practice methodologies to gather ongoing feedback throughout the design process.
• Audit the experience design of applications against best practice standards.
• Compile context into models that are easy for teams to understand such as empathy maps, journeys, personas, CVP charts and product overviews.
• Develop task flows to explore problem and solution spaces.
• Develop information architectures, navigation models and screen flows.
• Develop prototypes from low fidelity sketches to high-fidelity visual designs.
• Apply and contribute to design standards such as error handling.
• Support the definition and specification of user stories.
• Support the exploration of visual design by compiling mood boards through a competitor analysis, ensuring that the proposed solution is responsive and adaptable across all platforms.
• Facilitate that accessibility standards are met, including adherence to WCAG guidelines to promote usability across a range of platforms and devices.
• Complete the visual design of screens, ensuring full alignment with design system templates, components, and established guidelines.
• Work closely with content teams to optimise the content on screens, ensuring relevance and ease of use within content, supporting the development of content standards across applications.
• Work closely with the design system team to adopt and contribute to patterns and standards within the design system.
• Support the handover process of designs to development with thorough documentation of journeys, interactions and manage changes.
• Monitor the impact of design decisions post-launch, including user feedback, analytics, and performance metrics, to refine designs for future updates.

Stakeholder and Team Collaboration

• Partner with product managers, engineers, and multi-disciplinary designers to seamlessly integrate platform-specific designs within the development process, addressing technical constraints early.
• Utilise collaborative tools like Figma to streamline design workflows, promoting transparency and consistency across teams.
• Support the Product Design lead in creating and facilitating workshops and ideation sessions to foster creativity and reinforce a unified design vision.
• Ensure that sprint goals and delivery ways of work align with the agile practice: ensuring all design objectives are achieved within Agile sprints and that key project milestones are consistently met.
• Effective communication to raise concerns, risks and potential blockers. Presents work in Sprint reviews to Lead business leadership with impact.
• Work very closely with the other team members within the product team collaborate on design outcomes and provide design contribution to the business and technology outcomes that are generated by the team.

Design Coaching & Engagement

• Coach and guiding more junior product designers towards the delivery of high-quality design work within delivery timeframes.
• Reviews work as a standard quality practice, both with their product lead and with team members assigned to them for delivery management.
• Engage with the practices and structures of the Design CoE as an active member of the community and meets engagement requirements.
• Actively participates in the growth of the Product Design capability.

Minimum Requirements

Working Experience & Qualifications

• NQF Level 4: Grade 12 or equivalent
• 3+ years working in the field of product design, 1+ within roles that involved personally leading significant workstreams or product design outcomes.
• Experience working in an Omni-Channel Digital and Agile environment, with cross-functional collaboration, working with product, engineering, and business teams.
• Proven track record in the execution of high-quality product design (UX/UI) work within a product team.

Technical Expertise

• Proficiency in user research and design methodologies, including interviews, surveys, usability testing, wireframing, prototyping, accessibility and visual design.
• Proficiency in visual design knowledge and methodologies such as layout, typography, colour theory, graphics, interaction states, iconography and the exploration and creation of the assets of visual design.
• Solid expertise in design tools (e.g., Sketch, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and front-end development principles (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
• Proficiency in journey mapping, task flows, screen flows, navigation flows and information architecture.
• Experience with agile ceremonies and working collaboratively in cross-functional teams.
• Familiarity with design systems and component libraries, and can apply standards into design and adhere to design frameworks.

Nice to Have:

• Bachelor's Degree in design (Interaction, Graphic, Industrial), marketing, technology, business administration or a related field. With an Honour’s or Master’s degree as an additional plus.
• Experience with emerging technologies (e.g., AR/VR, AI).
• Background in cognitive psychology or human factors.
• Familiarity with accessibility standards and guidelines.
• Experience with service design and design thinking.
• Experience designing for multiple platforms, including web, mobile, and desktop.

Skills

Application Development, Compiling Code, Creative Design, Current State Analysis, Data Analysis, Data Collection Methods, Decompilers, Graphical User Interface (GUI) Development, Performance Calculations, Performance Gap Analysis, Presentation Techniques, Product Development, Program Testing Software, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Methodologies, User Experience (UX) Design, Web Platform Development Software

Competencies

Education

NQF Level 7 - Degree, Advance Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate or equivalent

Closing Date

24 June 2025 , 23:59

The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit in question.

The Old Mutual Story!