Lead content designer
Grade G6
What content designers do
Content designers make things easier for people to understand and use. This can involve working on a single piece of content or on the end-to-end journey of a service to help users complete their goal and government deliver a policy intent. In this role your work may involve the creation of, or change to, a transaction, product or single piece of content that stretches across digital and offline channels.
Role responsibilities
A lead content designer is an expert practitioner and leader who directs a team of content designers. They assure the content quality across whole teams and make sure content aligns to strategy and objectives while meeting the needs of users.
At this role level, you will:
- work closely with service managers, programme directors and senior stakeholders to resource teams, resolve problems and develop future projects
- promote the content design discipline, engage with the cross-government community and keep up to date with industry changes
In the Department for Education you will:
- identify and build strong relationships with stakeholders, including policy, marketing, communications and legal, influencing and collaborating with them to improve the structure and quality of the content
- create, improve and manage user‑centred content that meets user needs
- use data analytics, user research and usability testing to identify user needs, and map journeys and user stories to inform content strategy and design decisions to assure quality
- develop a content strategy for the programme you're working on, ensuring it connects with the content strategy of related programmes
- be responsible for content quality by managing small teams, mentoring content designers and reviewing content
- play an active role in the content design community at DfE and engage with the cross‑government design community
- work with the head of content design to contribute to the content design road map and lead on a strand of it
- contribute to the design standards and act as a guardian for them
- advocate the role of content designers and the value content design can bring, and embed content design practices into ways of working
- join the internal service assessment community and become a design assessor for services
Skills you need
It is essential that you can demonstrate the following experience in your application and at the interview:
- creating high quality, user-centred content
- using data and feedback to inform design decisions and improving content
- building strong stakeholder relationships
- creating content strategies that are user focussed
- leading others through constructive feedback to improve content design
- collaborating with user researchers, business analysts and interaction designers to define evidence-based content design strategies
- collaborating on prototypes using a variety of prototyping methods and choosing the most appropriate ones for the circumstance
- designing content for transactional services
- identifying and comparing the best processes or delivery methods to achieve minimum viable product (MVP), print and scope
- working in ambiguity with the ability to manage multiple projects and adapt to changing priorities and deadlines
It is desirable if you can demonstrate the following:
- champion good content design practice within government and industry
- prioritise and collaborate with counterpart colleagues across government
- develop a strategy for content that meets the organisation's objectives
- lead a team capable of executing that strategy