Senior Service Designer

University Health Network (UHN) is looking for an experienced professional to fill the key role of Senior Service Designer in our Smart Cancer Care Program.

The Energy of the City. The Rewards of a Great Career.

The University Health Network, where “above all else the needs of patients come first”, encompasses Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and the Michener Institute of Education at UHN. The breadth of research, the complexity of the cases treated, and the magnitude of its educational enterprise has made UHN a national and international resource for patient care, research and education. With a long tradition of groundbreaking firsts and a purpose of “Transforming lives and communities through excellence in care, discovery and learning”, the University Health Network (UHN), Canada’s largest research teaching hospital, brings together over 16,000 employees, more than 1,200 physicians, 8,000+ students, and many volunteers. UHN is a caring, creative place where amazing people are amazing the world. Find out about our purpose, values and principles here.

Smart Cancer Care (SCC), the cancer innovation program at UHN, is focused on creating new models of care to better support a holistic patient experience throughout the cancer care continuum, while at the same time improving the provider experience. We leverage real-time data, an agile service design mindset, and new technologies to enable our work. As a core member of SCC, the Senior Service Designer will play a critical role in leading qualitative user research, and will work with our analysts and product designers to create and iterate our cancer care services.

The focus of the projects within the Smart Cancer Care (SCC) Program is to support and promote excellence and innovation in patient care, research, and education; enabling the delivery of timely, safe, effective, and efficient services.

In this role, you will be responsible for leading and collaborating on mid- to large-scale projects that align to the SCC Strategic Plan to rethink cancer care. The scope of the Senior Service Designer will include, but is not limited to: leading qualitative (and some quantitative) user research; working hand-in-hand with our analysts and product designer to create and test product/service prototypes; and helping implement new services for our patients and frontline staff.

Why this role is awesome:

• Variety… with focus! SCC works with a wide variety of people in the cancer centre from patients, caregivers, physicians, nurses, admin staff, hospital leadership, and external partners to develop, pilot, iterate, and scale new services… all with a focus to make cancer care delivery better for patients and providers at UHN
• Experimentation and iteration: SCC is a place to play, learn, hone agile service design skills in the wild – we’re excited for team members to bring their ideas, new approaches, and to try new things
• Thought Leadership: We are working at the leading edge of healthcare innovation and are excited to share our knowledge. While publishing and speaking at conferences is not our driving motivation, sharing our work and success is important to us
• Flexibility: You can be flexible with your hours and working location – as long as work gets done, you are communicating well and often with the teams, it’s up to you when and how. That said, hospital staff do work in clinic-hours, so you will need to be flexible as well. Also we have a beautiful new space downtown Toronto that was freshly renovated during the pandemic, and we will be shifting back ~1day/week to the office to get some team facetime

Key Responsibilities: 

• Understanding and advocating for people affected by cancer (patients, caregivers, providers, admin staff)
• Leading user research activities (interviews, workshops, service prototyping, etc)
• Synthesizing data/insights, articulating user needs, and mapping existing systems and scenario (journeys maps, service blueprints, and workflow maps, etc.)
• Reviewing quantitative and qualitative data from various sources, analyzing, and interpreting the information to inform action
• Working with analysts and designers to create the service prototype
• Facilitate/orchestrate running participants through the service prototype
• Gather and synthesize the data
• Create actions to improve the service
• Developing relationships with all of our stakeholders in the Cancer Centre
• Managing communications with stakeholders (presenting research insights, ideas, and new designs to patients, clinical partners, and/or vendors)
• Providing team-wide leadership and mentorship on service design processes and methods
• Using methods and language that’s helps make design processes accessible and engaging for non-designer stakeholders

Qualifications:

• A passion for understanding and improving the patient/caregiver and healthcare provider experience
• Bachelor’s degree in Service Design, User Experience Design, Ethnography, Anthropology, Systems/ Industrial Engineering, Business or Health Administration, Health Informatics and or recognized equivalent required. Masters degree in a service design, user experience, informatics, systems engineering is preferred.
• At minimum five (5) years of practical and related experience, using service design, experience design, user research, and/or quality improvement methods
• A love service experience & design process
• Excellent written and oral communication skill
• Ability to work as a team and independently to deliver delightful and effective services in complex environments
• Experienced user researcher – able to lead, plan, conduct, and analyze complex workflows and patient journeys
• Visual communication fundamentals; we are looking for someone who appreciates and has the ability to communicate clearly and using visuals/maps
• Dynamic and engaging facilitator, able to guide the attention of a room full of care providers or patients
• Ability to effectively work with diversity and appreciate that people with different opinions, backgrounds and characteristics bring richness to the table
• Ability to perform duties in a professional and courteous manner and produce high quality work while meeting deadlines in accordance to UHN standards
• Exercise initiative and good judgment with ability to multi-task
• Compliance with confidentiality requirements
• Effective organizational, interpersonal and communication skills
• Knowledge of applicable legislative, UHN and/or departmental policies
• Client service oriented, with the ability to effectively work with diversity and appreciate that people with different opinions, backgrounds and characteristics bring richness to the challenge or situation at hand