As the Head of UI/UX Department, your primary focus is on building and leading the department. You will define a scalable resourcing strategy, balancing in-house expertise and external partnerships.
In this role you will:
- Lead the recruitment, training, and mentoring of top UI/UX talent, fostering a culture of excellence.
- Craft the vision and strategy for the UI/UX for the Franchise, with the UI Product Owner, following the franchise strategy – as defined by the Franchise Leadership Team – and the needs of the Projects – as defined by the Project Game, and Creative Directors.
- Work closely with Production to establish UI/UX budgets, timelines, and staffing needs. You will be accountable for the long-term UI/UX backlog as part of the wider Gameplay Platform initiative.
- Drive the establishment and maintenance of quality standards, best practices, design systems, documentation, and UI/UX guidelines, processes and workflows. You will ensure a data-driven approach to UI/UX decision-making, leveraging player feedback and research for ensuring quality standards are met. You will make sure the department stays ahead of industry trends, emerging technologies, and interaction models in gaming and beyond.
- Drive innovation in control schemes, accessibility, onboarding, and player journey design.
- Work closely with UX Testing & Research to validate player interactions, and be the primary liaison with them in the Franchise. You will collaborate with the Project Leadership Teams and the UXR and audience research functionalities of the wider organization in the organization playtesting, A/B testing, eye-tracking studies, and user research. You will be the primary owner of translating player insights into actionable design improvements. You will collaborate in maintain player personas and behavioural models to inform game design.
- Collaborate closely with the Franchise Leadership Team, and the Project Leadership Teams to identify challenges, opportunities, interesting new initiatives to pursue, as well as any potential risks, planning for mitigations, and escalating where necessary to overcome discrepancies or disagreements.
- Responsible for representing, and timely communicating vision, strategy and status of the department, including highlight perceived future opportunities and risks.
- Employ a data-informed, and player- and product centric, yet people-led mindset to support the Franchise and the delivery of the projects, and help build and maintain a positive, open, informed, and focused team.
Essential:
- Strong leadership skills, with a track record of mentoring and managing UI/UX teams.
- Proven experience building and leading a UI/UX department, defining structure, hiring, and setting best practices.
- Ability to balance creative vision, business and technical constraints with player value and best practices
- Expertise in UI/UX for games, including interaction design, accessibility, information architecture, and usability heuristics, including a good understanding of technical requirements and limitations.
- Strong knowledge of game control schemes, onboarding, and player psychology.
- Experience in outsourcing/vendor management, working with external UI/UX partners.
- A methodological and data informed approach
- Experience in project management methodologies such as scrum and agile
- Knowledge of project management software and tools
- Excellent organisational, management and problem-solving skills and mentality
- Excellent ability to connect people, with experience building and maintaining teams through cooperation and collaboration.
- Strong diplomatic skills, with an ability to unite multiple stakeholders with varied priorities and needs.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Experience working with in-house, or proprietary game engines (Unreal Engine UMG, Unity UI, or similar UI implementation tools).
- Understanding of Agile workflows and experience integrating UI/UX into iterative game development processes.
