Service Designer

Service designers work on products that matter, with people who value design and create work they are proud to talk about. They look to the future while designing for the now, immersing themselves in trends and constantly challenging the status quo. They are passionate about understanding how users behave with a knack for identifying and solving problems, mapping and visualising user journeys, facilitating a mutual knowledge within and outside of teams, spotting opportunities to deliver cost savings and reduce complexity, and helping to define the scope of a service. They will also have some experience of designing end-to-end services including online and offline.

At the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, service designers operate as part of a large family of interaction and service designers. They work in multidisciplinary teams, alongside user researchers, interaction designers, content designers, product owners, delivery managers and developers to deliver world-class, user-centred services.

Service designers work on the end-to-end design perspective of a service, identifying gaps and opportunities for end users and the organisation across all touch points within both digital and non-digital services. They work with team members and stakeholders and help the team make the right choices.

Overall, service designers help the government transform the way it delivers services, so that they’re more efficient, simpler, faster and easier to use.

Service designers play an effective part in the design community both internally and across the government.

Person specification

• Work with teams and stakeholders to capture the entire perspective of a service, set the vision and build a roadmap for the future
• Understand the existing system behind a service and work with teams to target improvements
• Identify opportunities for cost reduction and improvement within an existing service
• Capture, document and present holistic user journeys in a clear, engaging way
• Understand user needs and track interactions across departmental and organisational boundaries
• Contribute to ensuring that interactions and user journeys across a service are rational and consistent
• Create and rapidly iterate both digital and non-digital service prototypes where required

Skills and Experience

• A proven grounding in user-centred design, from concept to final delivery. You know which tools, process or methods to use and how to bring a delivery team along with you
• Knowing what good public services look like end-to-end, and how to design in an inclusive, accessible way
• Creating high-quality, compelling design concepts and artefacts such as service maps, models and blueprints
• Paper and digital prototyping. You understand the way the internet works and are responsive to changes in technology, adapting your concepts and approach accordingly
• Using data and research to influence design thinking
• Removing complexity from services
• Engaging the whole multidisciplinary team with the design process