Principal Service Designer

About the role

MassAbility is hiring a Principal Service Designer to help transform the way we deliver services to people with disabilities.

In this role, you will lead our design efforts. We need a systems thinker who thrives on understanding people and complex services. You’ll work on making constituents’ journeys streamlined and harmonious, and you’ll improve how we plan and deliver services that involve different MassAbility teams, programs, and sometimes other government agencies.

This position is a full-time contract role. The work schedule is Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. eastern time, in a hybrid arrangement, with one to two days per week spent in our office at 40 Broad Street in Boston’s Waterfront neighborhood. This position is expected to occasionally travel to Area Office locations within the Commonwealth of MA in support of their work.

What you’ll do

You’ll join a growing team within MassAbility’s Department of Excellence & Innovation and lead service design projects across the agency – nothing is off limits. Our ambitions span our public presence and the way people research and apply for services, the way our program teams manage relationships and services with participants and partners, our agency’s financial operations, and more.

Responsibilities

As Principal Service Designer, your mission is to put MassAbility on the cutting edge of accessible service design, creating delightful experiences for participants and staff alike. In this role, you will:

• Envision end-to-end experiences that blend digital and in-person touchpoints. Design, prototype, test, and refine.
• Find ways to transform service delivery to improve the end-to-end experiences of our constituents.
• Create service design artifacts (e.g., future-state service blueprints, customer journey maps, scenarios, experience models, narratives, etc.) to help the team understand constituent experiences.
• Collaborate with other experience owners/product managers, experience designers, researchers, engineers, vendors, program staff, service providers, employers, and constituents.
• Contribute to roadmap development and help us develop a future-state service vision and an experience strategy.
• Help us grow a constituent-centered service design mindset and adopt and integrate constituent experience best practices across MassAbility: Define best practices, mentor others, and facilitate learning.
• Connect participant and staff research to service, process, and technology decisions. Help MassAbility prioritize improvements based on demonstrated needs rather than technology alone.
• Facilitate collaboration across programs, operations, IT, and leadership to build a shared understanding of service challenges and develop practical, sustainable improvements.

We’d love to hear from you if you have

• An interest in helping the public and building accessible experiences
• 8-10 years of professional experience in service design and digital product design
• 5+plus years of experience as a lead service designer in agile cross-functional design and development environments
• 3+ plus years of experience in complex government environments (or something similar)
• Demonstrated ability navigating ambiguity and enabling teams to make difficult decisions
• Deep expertise in service design, experience research, experience/design strategy
• Solid experience, skill, and creativity in experience/interaction design and rapid prototyping
• Outstanding facilitation and consultation skills
• Strong system thinking skills
• Deep understanding of all facets of iterative human-centered design, development, and delivery
• Strong expertise in and commitment to accessible, inclusive, design
• Outstanding coaching and mentorship skills
• Outstanding communication and storytelling skills