Service Designer

As a mid-level service designer at Snook, you will use multiple forms of research and stakeholder participation to design services and end-to-end user experiences. The focus of your work will be on project delivery in complex and demanding environments where you will need to balance the needs of users with business or organisational constraints. You’re also likely to be involved with new business, supporting and managing more junior colleagues and helping to further define and embed Snook’s practice. These activities will be shared by your colleagues; this may mean that you focus more on some areas than others. You’ll report directly to one of our Senior Service Designers.

One of Snook’s core missions is ‘Next Era Government’. We strive to ensure that human needs are at the centre of government services’ design and delivery. We are the User-Centred Design partner for multiple government agencies, including Home Office, Department for Education, NHS Digital and NHSX. Working in these sectors will give you valuable experience of applying GDS standards and preparing for GDS Service assessments. We also work with local government and third and private sector organisations.

This role provides the opportunity to work across these sectors while receiving knowledge and support from other Snooks. We rotate people from one sector to another after 3 to 12 months (depending on the project), enabling people to develop in-depth knowledge of a variety of sectors.

We acknowledge that our team has a wealth of knowledge and experience, which is why we actively encourage Snooks to help devise and develop new business opportunities and champion internal passion projects.

Role requirements 

Key responsibilities of the role are:

• Service design on projects – The main focus of your role will be to create designs for services which are inclusive, accessible and planet-friendly. You’ll participate in multidisciplinary teams working on complex projects. You’ll need to be able to operate with autonomy and point teams and clients in the right direction to deliver on scope and on budget.
• Team support and management – You’ll help to support the service design team, for example by mentoring and line managing more junior team members, making recommendations around progression and contributing to recruitment activities.
• Developing Snook practice – Your responsibilities may include working with other Snook disciplines to further develop and articulate our ways of working and accessible, inclusive and planet-friendly design practices.
• Supporting new business – Your role is likely to include supporting Snook’s new business development activities by contributing to proposals and attending pitches.

Your skills and experience

We’re keen to hear from a range of applicants who can demonstrate some, or all, of the following skills, experience and qualities, as part of or in addition to being able to meet the requirements above:

Core technical skills

• Research: You contribute to planning research to uncover the key factors affecting a service and its use (contextual, operational, cultural, technological, human, strategic, business model…) You can identify research questions, approaches and activities appropriate to the project context, constraints and outcomes. You are confident in conducting research effectively and efficiently. You can analyse research findings to identify and concisely summarise actionable insights.
• Strategy & systems thinking: You understand and communicate how projects and services fit into wider strategic contexts. You can use systems thinking to map complex structures and systems, identify opportunities, and produce strategic recommendations.
• User-centred journeys & experiences: You can use multiple forms of research and stakeholder participation to design user-centred services and experiences.You ensure that what you design is feasible and viable, through an understanding of business and contextual constraints.
• Facilitation: You help to build a shared understanding of a project’s context, process and outcomes within your team. You lead the teams in the process of designing, organising and delivering workshops, guiding on the best approaches to deliver project objectives. You ensure facilitators are equipped for their roles and the client and stakeholders are fully participating. You support the team to present to the client, stakeholders and internally to Snook to engage and inspire them on a project/topic.
• Visual Communication: You understand how and when to deploy different approaches to visual communication to meet project outcomes. You can create professional, consistent visual communications that relay information in a concise, accessible and impactful way.
• Written Communication: You can identify the right format for written information (tool and level of information) to suit the audience and project. You can create clear and concise written information in order to achieve the intended impact or outcome.
• Recommendation & Implementation: You can support teams and clients to scope the practical requirements to implement change / clients’ next steps, outlining time frames and resource implications. You can prepare materials to effectively communicate recommendations, future phases of work and/or implementation requirements.
• Prototyping: You contribute to scoping prototype exercises appropriate for the relevant project stage. You can work across disciplines to design, build and test prototypes that meet or contribute towards project outcomes.