Senior Service Designer

Job Description

What we’re looking for:

We’re looking for a skilled practitioner with significant experience in delivering service design projects. The focus of your role will be to create end-to-end, evidence-based designs for services which are inclusive, accessible and planet-friendly. You’ll often be working with multidisciplinary teams on complex projects where autonomy and project management will be important.

We’re on the hunt for someone who will champion our values: to care passionately, be fluent in people, believe in your craft, push convention, be open to change, value each other.

We work with a broad range of clients, some of whom are completely new to user-centred design (UCD). This means you’ll also play a key role in championing our UCD approach.

The role may also involve:

• Leading and directing projects – You’ll lead multidisciplinary teams and clients in the pursuit of inclusive, accessible and planet-friendly services.
• Team support and management – You’ll help to support the service design team by inspiring and line managing team members, including overseeing appraisals and professional development.
• Defining and refining practice – You’ll help to define the way our disciplines work together, and progress the way NEC Digital Studio does inclusive, sustainable design.
• Supporting new business – You’ll help NEC Digital Studio find and win work by spotting opportunities with clients and helping with proposals and pitches.

Your skills and experience:

We’d like to hear from you if you have skills or experience in some of these areas:

• Research – You work with user researchers to uncover and articulate the key factors affecting the service and its use.
• Strategy & systems thinking – Familiar with systems thinking, you lead teams and clients to map and analyse strategies, systems and scenarios. You’re experienced in forming well-grounded strategic recommendations.
• User-centred journeys & experiences – You choose the right approaches to lead projects to outcomes that are great for the user, feasible to implement, and fit the client’s strategic vision.
• Facilitation – You lead teams to design and deliver engaging and effective workshops. You support colleagues to present to and inspire clients, stakeholders and other colleagues.
• Visual communication – You lead teams to make clear and compelling points through well-designed visuals. This may include drawing and sketching or graphic communication
• Written communication – You guide teams on the most appropriate written formats and structures for each project.  You create and oversee clear, concise writing.
• Recommendation & implementation – You work with stakeholders to identify what change is possible and how to bring it about. This includes outlining timeframes and resource implications, and identifying future phases of work.
• Prototyping – You lead teams, clients and stakeholders to scope targeted prototyping exercises. You work across disciplines to design, build and test prototypes that contribute to project outcomes (online and offline).
• Stakeholder management – you know how to negotiate and guide clients and stakeholders towards positive outcomes that deliver outcomes within budget.
• Managing complexity and ambiguity – Services are complex and messy! You’re up for leaping into the unknown, supporting our team members and clients to navigate the uncertainty that comes with service transformation projects
• Proactive and autonomous – you can lead the conversation, and look for ways to participate and add value