Lead Service Designer

We’re looking for an experienced lead service designer to join our growing team at Spotless. You will be working across our range of clients championing the human-centred approach to projects and processes.

You will have a minimum of 6 years experience working in Service Design, ideally within an agency environment, with extensive experience of the whole process from initial research through to strategy, design workshops, and design deliverables.

Day-to-day you will have a leading role in understanding client challenges, interpreting briefs, exploring trends and opportunities, recommending methods, and engaging with users and stakeholders to derive insight and drive creative solutions.

You will be confident in questioning briefs and suggesting innovative methodologies to suit project objectives, with the confidence to report back to stakeholders at all levels of seniority. You will be responsible for creating proposals and leading bids.

You will have a keen interest in research, and be able to support qualitative research including ethnographic studies, one-to-one interviews and service safaris.

Key responsibilities

• Lead service design and design thinking projects involving innovation and problem solving, to generate concepts and proposals for new propositions, or to evolve and improve existing services
• Planning and facilitating workshops and design sprints, with clients or customers, including ideation and co-creation, priority ranking, value proposition, service definition and customer experience mapping
• Leading or supporting on client debriefs, to playback insights and findings, making it easy for clients to connect the dots with clear communication and actionable recommendations
• Highly proficient at creating artefacts and deliverables, which will include research reports, user stories, sketches, wireframes, sitemaps, journey maps, service blueprints and prototypes.
• Most, if not all of your projects, will be driven by insight. You will be involved in insight reporting, as well as user experience testing. Therefore, you should have strong research skills, with the ability to work on shorter tactical work, as well as more strategic design projects.
• Working directly with stakeholders, involving them openly in your processes, helping them distill project goals and objectives into project requirements, and championing the needs of customers throughout the project.
• Continually evaluate and improve Spotless methods and processes to ensure we are always offering the best solution to clients and their customers
• Contribute to internal projects, writing articles and blog posts on relevant service design topics and within sectors of interest
• Attend at least 1 service design event every half-year to keep up to date with the latest trends and methodologies
• Coaching junior consultants and teams, with respect to Service Design and, potentially, Design Research.
• Inspiring co-workers and sharing knowledge and skills with the team, recognising potential in the latest technology and other trends.
• Highly motivated and self-managing, with good time management skills and the ability to deliver according to budget and deadlines.

Your skills/experience

• 6 years+ working in a Service Design role, supporting the design of digital services, and applying strategic thinking to the process
• A good commercial understanding, with experience working within an agency or consultancy environment being highly desirable
• Be able to demonstrate deep applied knowledge and experience with a range of service design methods and tools, e.g. experience mapping, service blueprints and ecosystems, concept prioritisation and roadmaps, persona development, scenario storytelling
• An understanding/experience of various research methodologies including contextual interviews, stakeholder interviews and user feedback sessions (remote or lab based)
• Extensive experience researching and designing digital services and applying strategic thinking to the process
• Experience in planning, and conducting ideation sessions and workshops leveraging design thinking methods.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience championing human-centred design, design thinking, and innovation.
• Working with multidisciplinary teams to produce exceptional digital experiences, whilst balancing the needs of users and clients throughout.
• Bringing designs to life through prototypes (with a range of tools).
• Good use of tools and platforms such as Miro, Figma, Sketch, Invision and Adobe Creative Suite. Graphics/illustration capability is also desirable.
• At least a Bachelor’s degree in Service design, Product design, Psychology, Human Computer Interaction, or other relevant fields, or relevant professional experience.

Benefits:

As well as providing a supportive, close-knit working environment, and the opportunity to grow and develop, we offer a fantastic array of benefits alongside your salary:

• Hybrid/Remote Working – we have team members all across the UK, and support hybrid or fully remote working – as long as you can travel comfortably to London to collaborate on projects when required. We also provide you with the tech you need to do your job remotely!
• Company Pension Scheme – we offer a pension scheme with options for investing in Sustainable and Ethical (including Shariah) funds.
• Utility Bill Support – We provide monthly support towards the cost of utilities.
• Private Medical Insurance – our team’s health is important to us! Employees can benefit from Private Medical Insurance via Aviva.
• Gym Membership – benefit from a gym membership with Virgin Active Gyms – or an equivalent monetary benefit for employees with no local VA gym.
• WellBeing Budget – each month our Culture Club decides on a wellbeing theme, and employees are given a budget to treat themselves!
• Employee Assistance Programme – All employees receive access to a confidential EAP service, 24/7 365 days per year.
• Training, Development & Books – focusing on your professional development is key at Spotless, so we offer a generous annual budget to spend on training courses, conferences, events and books.
• Peension
• Tech Scheme – Salary sacrifice scheme to save money on tax when buying tech appliances
• Cycle to work Scheme – Salary sacrifice scheme to save money on tax when buying a bike
• Referral Scheme – Bonus when you refer a colleague or a freelancer
• Summer Hours – Between July and August we finish an hour early on Fridays to enjoy the sun
• Compnay sick pay – Employees get generous company sick pay
• Birthday off – you can take a day off for your birthday or if it falls on a weekend the closest Friday or Monday.
• Duvet days – 2 days per year for the employee to take off, no questions asked
• Annual Leave – full-time employees benefit from 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays – and part-time employees get a pro rata equivalent!