Senior User-Centred Design Consultant

About The Role

Hi, we’re Hippo.

We’re a digital service design consultancy that works closely with our clients to create digital products and services that work for everyone. Since our inception, we have quickly established ourselves as a leading supplier of digital leaders, service design teams and delivery expertise. We support large-scale digital transformation programmes to public and private sector organisations looking to truly embrace digital services to innovate and evolve. We aspire to add value and leave a lasting benefit within those institutes. Our philosophy is to ensure the user is at the core of everything we do, research, design and deliver. Collaborating with us means embracing a digital-first strategy with people first design, which will genuinely create lasting change and positive impact.

As a Senior Consultant, you’ll already be an expert in user centred design. You’ll also be a leader of people and teams and advocate for user-centred design approaches. Hippo will provide exciting opportunities to share your expertise with, and influence, clients and team members, and to develop as a leader.

What You’ll Do

• Propose ideas that solve problems creatively and shape these into logical, coherent solutions that centre around user needs
• Design end-to-end user journeys that create the optimal user experience
• Use insights from user research and metrics to identify ‘pain points’, define and improve the design
• Explore a range of approaches to solve specific user problems and ensure that the product logically flows from one step to the next
• Produce user journeys, sitemaps, navigation schema, and annotated wireframes
• Conduct usability testing and gathering feedback
• Engage with agile, multidisciplinary teams with a user-centred design process
• Learn from insights from user research and metrics to define and improve the service, and explain your decisions clearly
• Run workshops with your team and stakeholders
• Work with the Hippo design community to share best practice to ensure high standards
• Help drive our creative culture by being a highly visible advocate for all things design both internally and externally

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• Map service ecosystems and define clear service propositions
• Tackle systemic, institutional problems beyond just the digital interface
• Facilitate collaborative workshops to align diverse stakeholders on service visions
  
  

About The Candidate

We recognise that UCD consultants often lean towards core skills in UX or Service Design. To be successful, you’ll bring strong depth in one of these areas alongside a working knowledge of the other, giving you the flexibility to zoom in and out, designing detailed user interactions or understanding and articulating full end-to-end service challenges. You have a deep understanding of user-experience design for mobile and the web, technology trends, demonstrable design skills, and the ability to show relevant work across complex service environments. You will have the knowledge and desire to investigate, innovate and develop emerging design, UX, service design and technology trends.

You will also have;

• Strong ability to recognize and predict use-cases and user interaction, including happy path, edge and corner cases, and incorporate them into designs
• Experience in rapid prototyping tools, for example Sketch and Invision
• Great consultancy skills, caring about your client’s needs and motivations
• Enjoy sharing your skills and experience with your client to enable them to continue to iterate and improve content after you leave
• Ability to design end-to-end service journeys that span multiple touchpoints, channels, and offline interactions, not just digital interfaces
• Experience translating complex policy, legal, or organisational requirements into coherent service propositions
• Deep understanding of how to influence organisational change and advocate for user-centred design across all levels of client organizations
  
  

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About The Company

As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
• private health cover
• private dental cover

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• additional company pension contributions
• additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
• wellbeing contribution
• charity contributions
• tree planting
  

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive.

We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

Hi, we’re Hippo.

At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design and software engineering. We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes.

We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human-centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world.

Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We're confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you're looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.

Hippo locations

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on-site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.