Designer’s Job Description

What does it mean to be a designer working on the core staff of ACT?

Core activities

You will design learning materials to meet the requirements specified in an outline design specification to create performance improving training for customers. This means that you will:

 Work with experts and high performers (who actually carry out the task/process to be trained) to gather detailed information
 Work with computer systems to find out how they function where training is required on a specific system
 Talk to members of the target group to gain an understanding of the best way to meet their learning needs
 Design materials in a variety of media to meet the design brief
 Solve problems
 Influence customer expectations
 Adhere to design standards and contribute to the quality process
 Test materials with members of the target group and be prepared to change them to meet their comments

To be successful at ACT, you will need to be able to:

 Work to strict deadlines and under pressure
 Work at a customer’s site (sometimes) and be prepared to fit into their ways of working
 Work within time and financial constraints to create designs that can be realised within budgetary limits
 Write clear, concise and grammatical English
 Have a basic awareness of the ‘visual language’ of design (composition, layout)
 Have a basic understanding of how people learn
 Be prepared to quality check your own work before submitting it to the customer for approval
 Be flexible about how you design (each project is different and each customer likes to work in different ways)
 Show initiative in solving problems or tackling customer uncertainties

The key skills you will need for this exciting, challenging and creative role are:

Communication skills – you will need to be able to listen to customer needs and translate these needs into clear and creative designs. You will also need to be able to communicate with a wide range of people – we work with groups as diverse as senior directors, call centre operatives, tellers, managers and administrators.

Design skills – we need people who can be creative, but stick to the requirements of a design brief, and you need to be willing to work in a range of different media – including paper manuals, videos, multimedia packages, posters and workshops.

People skills – we work in multidisciplinary project teams that include freelancers, suppliers and customers, so it’s vital that you can work comfortably and effectively with other people in a team atmosphere to achieve a common goal.

It would help if you could demonstrate an understanding of and willingness to learn more about the way that people learn – our aim is to be the first choice for performance solutions for our customers and we can only do this if we constantly improve our approach to training design.

If this is of interest to you, please contact Wendy Weller-Davies at wendy@actconsult.co.uk with your CV or other information. I will be on holiday until 28 February so you will receive a response after that.
Wendy Weller-Davies