Experience Design Director - Johannesburg at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Design Director is responsible for driving Absa Personal and Private Banking’s customer experiences and design thinking across a business unit, channel or a combination.
• She/he supports senior business leaders in embedding customer-centric thinking in business strategy and decision-making and provides insights and input to process design.
• Design Director manages multiple design projects in her/his portfolio and ensures design teams deliver coherent, world-class customer experiences aligned to the business goals and customer needs.
• Reporting directly into the Head of Design, as a leader he/she will combine first‐class design expertise, creativity, thought leadership, and commercial acumen with leadership gravitas to work with executives and to direct, inspire, lead, all levels of design and creative talent. Design Directors operate across project, team and business dimensions, connecting the dots to enable transformative change

Job Description

Key Accountabilities

Accountability: Business alignment and strategy

• Partner with business and product leadership to provide input on customer experience and to align with business strategy and needs. Identify opportunities, and provides guidance on the vision and objectives of the project.
• Continually elevate the quality of experiences, products and services we design to enable the business to deliver on its customer experience, brand promise and group strategic agenda.
• Work with UX, product and business metrics and measurements to both monitor and manage the quality of design delivery and to create tangible customer insights needed for the effective decision making.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and role players and ensure that PPB is well positioned to provide competitive and industry leading experience design.

Accountability: Design delivery management and QA

• Define design objectives, scope and deliverables of each project and align with the business to manage expectations and ensure clear outcomes.
• Allocate and monitor design resources to ensure that quality work will be completed on time and in budget. Involve external design consultants when appropriate to augment capability.
• Closely direct designers and process engineers who are driving day-to-day design detail. Engage and inspire entire project teams with thought leadership.
• Take ownership of the customer experiences within the business area/channels and constructively challenge business and technical decisions that may compromise quality and risk the best possible outcomes for the customers, and colleagues.
• Diligently sign‐off designs at various milestones, ensuring high quality, consistency and adherence to Absa design standards and compliance with Absa design system.
• Ensure projects remain on course with design delivery and reach the highest standards of design that create innovation and user value.
• Provide updates and present final designs to senior Absa leadership.
• Develop and nurture stakeholder relationships across teams and disciplines to promote collaboration and efficiency.
• Actively seek ways to continuously measure impact of design on the customer and business, reporting the insights to the senior management and business stakeholders.

Accountability: World class design

• Participate in shaping overall wider vision and strategy for experiences, products and services, particularly in areas of specific expertise. For example, a DD with a strong grounding in product design would be expected to make a significant contribution to Absa’s overall digital strategy.
• Deliver projects, which lead to the creation of an industry leading customer experience, which is notably different, far exceeds expectations and is at the global forefront of simplicity and usability while still maintaining the depth and richness in functionality of the Absa product set.
• Leverage customer insight and data to ensure that products/services/solutions are truly designed around the customer/colleague.
• Ensure teams embrace design thinking methodologies, quantitative measurement of quality and other best practice in developing design options and narrowing down the final solution.
• Determine and set the optimal design approach for projects from ideation to final design implementation, providing and documenting personas and journey maps, site-mapping, wire-framing, prototyping, user-testing, visual assets, front-end code etc.
• Evangelize the benefits of design to the wider business and be an ambassador/champion of design for customer experience and transformation.

Accountability: People Leadership

• Promote the professional development of the individuals in one’s reporting line through weekly one-on-one mentoring, training and providing the right opportunities for growth and development.
• Actively manage the people in your teams, supporting them in prioritization, problem solving and technical development.
• Contribute significantly and meaningfully to a design office and team environment in which designers will thrive, be motivated by and develop as professionals.
• Actively contribute the overall knowledge management, providing insights and direction; and by bringing people together to share knowledge.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Arts/Social Science/ or equivalent (NQF Level 7) and/or Degree in a Design discipline such as product, industrial, service, interaction, digital or visual design.
• Has at least 5+ years’ experience directing complex, commercial, design projects at a leading agency or within internal design function at a major brand involving senior stakeholders and interdisciplinary creative teams.
• A design practitioner background and foundation within one or more disciplines. Ideally with a portfolio of award‐winning work in the financial services industry.
• Strong track record of delivering high quality design projects with strong customer impact and proven value-add to the business
• Experience conducting audience and usability research, utilising this data and other data sources to drive design decision making and measure impact
• Familiar with designing product, services and experiences across multiple touch points.
• Has worked with large budgets and major brands.
• Other commercial or operational business experience advantageous.

Knowledge and Skills

• You may be specialized in a particular field e.g. digital, service or product design.
• Highly creative with the ability to generate ideas and practically contribute to design details.
• Ability to communicate ideas through drawing, digital tools, prototyping, model making etc.
• Ability to inspire others.
• Ability to influence stakeholders at all levels, including outside the design team. Senior level written and verbal communication including public speaking.
• Ability to create project briefs and not just deliver them.

Education

• Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences (Required)

End Date: August 26, 2026