Service Designer

SocietyWorks seeks a Service Designer who wants to make a difference in the world, as part of a nimble, digital-first, entirely remote team in the UK.

As a leading member of our design team, you will use your experience and passion for service design to help us discover new solutions to the challenges our local government and public sector partners face, along with supporting the development teams in prototyping, testing, designing, and iterating new features on long-established products.

Through our own research we’re aware that civic technology services often don’t reach the disadvantaged and marginalised communities that could benefit the most – we’d like you to help us change that.

SocietyWorks is the commercial arm of mySociety, through which we provide impactful and useful digital services that enable citizens to meaningfully engage with government and their local communities, working with dozens of UK councils of all shapes and size and organisations like Transport for London and Highways England, to help deliver local services to citizens efficiently and transparently.

No recruiters or agencies, please.

What does the role involve?

For us a Service Designer is a broader role than might be the case at other organisations, encompassing user research, prototyping and some hands-on design and light development work; along with leading on client presentations and being involved in new business pitches.

You’ll need to be organised, self-motivated and self-directed. We’ve been a remote organisation since our beginnings, and we do everything we can to maintain a fun and supportive culture, despite being physically distanced from one another.

SocietyWorks and mySociety team members work collaboratively and there is a high-trust culture: you’ll get as much guidance and support as you require when you need it, with plenty of freedom and space to get the job done in the best way. With advance knowledge of all our upcoming development, it’ll be up to you to plan your work and time most effectively, in a way that suits you.

Responsibilities

• Lead on discovery, user-testing and consequence scanning workshops with our local government and public sector clients.
• Deliver well thought-out mockups and early stage functional prototypes, so that we can get feedback from users and customers, and provide inputs for the development teams to start building from.
• Demonstrate a consistent and high quality user experience through sketching, prototyping, testing and iteration.
• Collaborate with designers and developers across SocietyWorks and mySociety to share workload, and contribute new perspectives on tricky design challenges – especially those that remove barriers from wider community use of our services.
• Share your expertise around design decisions and their impacts with clients and across the rest of the organisation – through show ‘n’ tells, workshops, and blog posts.
• Ensure our products and services are designed according to inclusive design principles, taking into account what’s good for people, the planet and society as a whole.
• Design responsively to ensure accessibility and usability across all our supported devices of every size, age, and capability.
• Consider how new design patterns can be incorporated into our services to benefit marginalised or disadvantaged communities with greater voice.