Service Designer

The Role:

As a Service Designer working across our Digital and Innovation portfolio you’ll make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s success. Supporting core IT and technology activities, and with a strong focus on our Smart City ambitions to build a city that supports and celebrates all of its communities, you’ll take a proactive and relentless approach to delivery and positive change. You could be asked to work in a number of different ways, from being part of a team working to iterate a product to continuously improve and meet the needs of our users, or joining a Project team using Agile methodologies to deliver agreed outcomes, to acting as the member of a service team delivering against a set of requirements. Whatever you do, you’ll specify and design end-to-end services for our most complex and interdependent services, help to define user needs and business objectives, and identify and mitigate design challenges.

Working with senior leaders to identify service opportunities and business solutions, including improvements to information systems, data management, practices, organisation and equipment, you’ll be working with our service areas to map their business flows, inspire their ambitions, help them streamline process and understand their interconnection with the rest of our organisation. We’ll also expect you to prototype services and interactions, and make an important contribution to the iterative design and development process as you provide high quality expertise relating to the optimisation of accessibility and usability.

Committed to ensuring that the views of end-users and any other party involved in your work is fully considered, and that appropriate prioritisation is applied to meet business objectives, you’ll take part in detailed research, using data and narratives to better design and iterate services. Building service patterns which encompass not just digital service delivery but all channels and methods of access, and making a major contribution to the development of the service design community, we’ll also expect you to champion service design as key to transformation, and help our service areas identify opportunities and build ambitious plans for the future.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

To be a success in this role you should have proven experience of end-to-end service design, a good understanding of product development, and the ability to explain your ideas clearly while influencing a diverse range of stakeholders. A superb communicator with confident persuading skills, the decisions you make should be driven by data and evidence, and underpinned by well developed knowledge of modern technology, including cloud technology, architecture, agile delivery methods and software practices. We’ll also expect you to possess a good understanding of user research principles and benefits, knowledge of the cross-government DDAT framework, and a practical understanding of systems thinking and the history of service design.

With experience of working in multidisciplinary teams to design and build services and improve existing delivery, and of delivering prototype interactions that unlock a team’s creative thinking, you’ll be capable of facilitating cross-organisational work and building positive relationships with everyone you interact with. Ready to guide design decisions in complex service areas, lead process change, plot a path forward and reveal opportunities, you’ll have the skills to understand technical complexity and risks, run collaborative design activities and deliver a transformation vision. You’ll also possess the skills to manage risk and create prototypes on paper, in static code or in conversation.

Skilled at building clear visualisations of service and user journeys to help teams plan and prioritise their work, your relentless focus on the end-user will allow you to contribute to research and the translation of feedback into design decisions. Passionate about taking a full and active role in the cross-government digital and design community, and able to apply digital ways of thinking to non-digital problems, any previous experience in a service design project within a highly regulated environment would be a bonus.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.