Job Introduction

BBC Research & Development is looking for a highly experienced and inspiring User Experience and Design Principal to join the leadership team of the newly formed applied research area in Audience Experiences.

This is a rare opportunity to join an expert multi-disciplinary team formed of designers, user research experts, data scientists, human computer interaction experts and development producers who work collaboratively with some of the best R&D engineers in the UK as well as many ground-breaking industry partners.

Your role will be to help this team explore and design public-service audience experiences of the future. You’ll do this through deep values-led research, prototyping using cutting-edge technology, and the design of scalable products, tools and services that will deliver the BBC’s purpose to the next generation.

Our mission is to use this expertise in user experience to help the BBC conceive, develop and deliver innovative, transformational audience experiences for years to come.

We have a long track record of collaborating with teams across BBC and wider industry to develop, trial and evaluate new experiences, and to improve the creative process through cutting-edge technologies and creative practice.  We work closely with teams in the BBC who deliver globally renowned products such as iPlayer, Sounds, News, Sport, Children’s and Learning. You will work collaboratively with the Creative leadership team in BBC UX&D to make the BBC services universal, valued and more personalised and immersive. For example, we are working with News and Sounds to deliver personalised experiences  

We have developed industry leading and award-winning user experiences in wide range of key areas such as recommendations, interactive media, personalised storytelling, object-based broadcasting, public service AR and xR as well as emerging areas such as in-Car experiences and Personal data stores. In last few years we have worked with BBC Arts to launch Civilisations AR for over 1m users and cited by Apple as one of best examples of AR for learning. Recently, we have worked with the BBC3’s RuPaul’s Drag Race and iPlayer to develop a Watch Together service during the lockdown. Many of these developments are made available to the public via BBC Taster www.bbc.co.uk/taster  or to creative producers via BBC Makerbox www.bbc.co.uk/makerbox .

We are recognised as first class leaders in user research and our work directly influences the wider industry. Our 2022 research agenda is focused on areas such as personalised and responsive media (object based media), augmented and mixed reality (including what may or may not become the metaverse); human values framework; personal data stewardship; novel user research techniques.

We collaborate closely with academic researchers through numerous university partnerships across the UK by sponsoring and hosting PhD students and interns, and through collaborative research projects. Currently, we are involved in the “AI for Personalised Media Experiences” (AI4ME) project which, over the next five years, aims to produce and deliver personalised media at scale. We actively publish and disseminate our work and strive to partner with industry across the world.

We are looking for a special talent who is driven to work in state of the art in design for new and emerging technologies covering areas such as service design, interaction design, interface design, ethical design and major commitment to accessibility and inclusive design. We want you to inspire the team and the department to do ground-breaking and valued work bring a human centred focus to everything we do.

Finally, we strive to build and maintain an inclusive, positive, and enjoyable team culture. We achieve this through regular self-reflection, and experimentation in new policies and ways of working.

Role Responsibility

You will take a prominent role in both setting the strategy of the Audience Experience applied research area and managing day-to-day work towards the team’s ambitions. You will work closely with teams in other parts of the BBC to develop and transfer work, as well as steering research collaborations with academia and industry. Alongside your role as a team lead for user research & design, you will be encouraged to continue your own design research or development activities, and to maintain and grow your external profile.

You will work in collaboration with other senior staff in the team and with the Head of Applied Research for Audience Experience. The work of the Area involves:

• Creating and evaluating prototypes, tools, and trial experiences
• Leading a user-centred approach to research and development, focusing on deep understanding of users and their values, user requirements, user experience testing, and quality evaluation
• Maintaining and developing design expertise
• Working with industry, academia, and the wider BBC to enable the adoption of R&D work at scale (nationally and globally)

The Research Area is currently focusing on areas such as:

• Deep user research work to better understand user needs and human values in an increasingly connected society with challenges around universality, digital divide and inclusion.
• Exploring personalisation opportunities and challenges through new approaches to delivering object-based media.
• Development of future services that better support privacy preserving technologies such as Personal Data Stores.
• Novel ways of delivering immersive and interactive experiences, for personal or shared experiences such as in-Car experiences, AR/xR and ‘metaverse’.
• Prototype development and trialling of real world pilots for public evaluation and researching emerging evaluation methodologies.
• Developing and testing innovative production tools to ease the tasks of programme makers and enable creativity for digital journalists and/or producers.
• Providing expert consultancy on emerging UX&D areas of relevance and share best practice to other teams in R&D and the rest of the organisation.