Futureheads Recruitment Ltd

Hello everybody,

I have a new perm role to brief all you heavyweight User Experience Practitioners on. If you are looking for new perm opportunities, between 70-90k, working for a Central London consultancy, please read on.

Now, the first thing to explain about this role, as it’s one of the most interesting and appealing things about it, is how these guys work with their clients, and what their production process. It is one that is often talked about but very rarely practiced by agencies in London, and in this case it is one of the founding principles of everything they do.

So, they work with very large, global investment banks and FS institutions, and work almost exclusively on ‘Business Systems’, which is qualified as anything internally focussed for use by staff within the organisation. So this can include ERP systems, procurements systems, document management systems, anything internally focussed. Now, some of you may have switched off already, but please don’t until you hear how they build these things for their clients, and what these systems actually need to do. Everything is based around intelligent interrogation of why the client thinks they need these things, as opposed to just taking the brief and agreeing to build it, with no thought as to whether it is going to solve the problem in any way. Also, the beauty of these products is in their interactions, interface, form and function, as opposed to their skin. So if you are focussed around  creating flashy looking products to help sell cars or mobile phones, then this is perhaps not the role for you. If, however, your designers spirit is nourished by creating beautifully simple solutions to unbelievably complex problems, then read on. So, a typical client brief will go like this:

Client: ‘We need a new Single Dealer Platform for our brokers to use’

These guys: ‘Why?’

Client: ‘Because the current one doesn’t seem to be working how it should.’

These guys: ‘OK, well let’s find out if that’s true.’

There will then begin a very intense period of research, stakeholder engagement, business mapping and process capturing, ethnographic study and landscaping to ascertain what the actual business process is, rather than just the technical consideration. This research will take into account everything from human interaction, environment, context of actions, ergonomics, psychology and neuroscience, to team structure, size and behaviours. Once this is captured, the correct solution is presented, which 9 times out of 10 is very different to the original brief. So, in a nutshell, if you would like to undertake a role where you are actually helping global business’ to understand their problems, rather than just building the solutions they think they need and taking the money, then this is a role you should explore. But it is also one which requires a particular type of practitioner…

You must be an intellectual interrogator, not one to take anything at face value but challenge, question and investigate. You must also be adept at managing challenging stakeholders, and helping very powerful and important people to understand that perhaps they are not right in their assumptions, whilst maintaining the strength of the relationship. You will ideally currently be a Principle or Lead consultant within a leading consultancy (as opposed to a design and build agency making marketing sites or ecommerce products), and you will have a background in intelligent research feeding into beautiful design, rather than just design.

If  this sounds of interest, let me know.

Ben

ben@wearefutureheads.co.uk