Lead Service Design

The role

We’re looking to add an intermediate to senior level service design consultant to our team. This is a 3 month, full time, salaried contract, with the intention of transitioning to a full time, permanent role, assuming mutual fit. The role is suitable for someone with experience leading service design projects. (You may have worked under titles such as design researcher, design strategist, UX researcher or others – the most important thing is you bring a knowledge of design methodology and process and you are excited to apply this to service based projects.)

An important aspect of this role is building a culture, team and workplace from the ground up at Made Manifest. You will need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and collaborate to figure things out, and help us to create a workplace we all enjoy and feel proud of!

Key types of activities and work you will take on:

• This is a client facing role, involving presenting, leading weekly meetings, and leading projects. The primary focus is on delivering service design projects for clients.
• Planning and conducting qualitative research like interviews, contextual inquiries, stakeholder interviews.
• Capturing and synthesizing research data to develop detailed insights.
• Workshop design and facilitation for large and complex stakeholder groups. 
• Developing artefacts like journey maps, blueprints and writing reports.
• Prototyping and testing service touchpoints and improvements. 
• Proactively steering project approach, methodology and outputs. 
• Work with the founder (Linn) to create a workplace that we are all proud to be a part of and where diverse teams can thrive. (This could include defining certain processes, documenting our methods, helping to keep the Drive really organized, experimenting with team rituals and ways of working.)

Why this role is awesome:

• • Variety: Made Manifest works with a wide range of clients across private, public and non-profit sectors, on projects ranging from straight up journey mapping to developing and piloting new services. 

• Experimentation: Made Manifest is a vehicle for learning, practice development and experimentation in service design – we’re excited for team members to bring their ideas, new approaches and to try new things. We don’t adhere to cookie cutter approaches. 

• Thought leadership: We have worked on the first global service design salary survey, write an ongoing newsletter called Ask a Service Designer, and spoken at conferences. Want to develop workshops? Talk at a conference? Write for the blog? Something else? Awesome!

• • Flexibility: You can be flexible with your hours – as long as work gets done, and client commitments are managed, it’s up to you when and how.

• Shaping the studio: We’re excited to continue to build Made Manifest as a practice and business that is values driven and a great place to work, and we want your input!  

Our ideal candidate:

***Note that we do not require or expect you to have experience in all of these areas or meet every single criteria! If you have half or more, you’re good to apply.

• Is passionate about service design and continuing to explore, experiment and expand your knowledge and perspective on the field and craft.
• Is a hands on design practitioner with experience and deep craft in the end to end design process, including these six key skills (read more from our newsletter)
  • Design research
  • Service prototyping and testing 
  • Organizational change 
  • Workshop design and facilitation 
  • Visual and communication design 
  • Communication skills 
• Can think strategically and holistically, while also executing and sweating the details! 
• Is comfortable proactively driving projects forward and asking for support / collaboration when needed.
• Can self manage and meet deadlines, proactively figure out what needs to be done next, and is super organized to ensure clients get consistent, reliable service.
• Has high digital literacy. We are currently fully remote and adapt our toolset to the clients needs (e.g. work with GSuite, Microsoft office, MURAL, Miro, Figma, Sketch, Zoom, Meet, Slack – we often need to dive in and use the tools that work best for our clients!)
• Loves communicating, collaborating and storytelling – is a ‘people person’ who thrives on building relationships and great client service.
• Is conscientious and thorough, empathetic, tactful in tough situations, collaborative, highly communicative and reliable.
• Is proactive and open to trying new things, figuring it out, collaborating and working through ambiguous problems. You don’t need the path fully charted out for you to get started.
• Has experience working in a consulting/agency/client services environment with a wide range of client types (bonus points for a smaller studio or small business environment!)
• Is excited to be part of building something long term and taking on a key role at Made Manifest. 
• Has a sense of fun, whimsy, creativity and not taking work too seriously! (For example, you might be known to put GIFs in your research reports, dance to close out the workday or bake cakes for your colleagues.)

If you are *this* close to what we’ve described but aren’t sure, apply. Let’s figure out together if this is where you could shine. Seriously.

This role may not be suitable for you if

• You find client work / client services stressful.
• You are a perfectionist who can’t meet deadlines.
• You’re not sure if a very small, boutique team is right for you. You’d prefer things to be well defined with clear cut pathways.