Senior Service Designer

Job overview

At UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) our mission is to prepare for, prevent and respond to infectious diseases and environmental hazards to keep all our communities safe, to save lives and protect livelihoods. We are a trusted source of advice to government and to the public, focusing on reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by threats to health.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) as Senior Service Designer within our User-Centred Design (UCD) Team.

The UCD Team are experts in design and delivery with a shared mission to support improvements to UKHSA services and products by better understanding users’ needs and experiences.

Our delivery squads take on a varied portfolio of work, with much of our input being focused on the discovery and alpha stages. As a Senior Service Designer, you’ll work as part of a multi-disciplinary squad collaborating with teams across UKHSA. You’ll help to shape product and service design, to support UKHSA to solve problems, improve public health outcomes and address health inequalities. Alongside this, you’ll help to embed UCD practice and principles, supporting UKHSA to become a high performing organisation.

Job Description

Main duties of the job

As a Senior Service Designer, you will be an expert practitioner. This role involves providing strategy, guidance and support to internal teams across UKHSA to ensure that their policies, services and products are user-centred. It includes working with stakeholders to design accessible services that reduce friction and complexity across the whole service, finding solutions to complex problems and helping UKHSA to achieve its public health objectives.

You will:

• be comfortable assuring best practice, leading, coaching and mentoring others within the team, including coaching stakeholders and professionals from other disciplines in service and interaction design and user-centricity.
• work with the Lead Service Designer and the Head of UCD to embed the UKHSA approach to service and interaction design, ensuring quality, innovation, and creativity in how we approach all aspects of service and interaction design and how we bring concepts to life for stakeholders to effect change.
• be an active part of the user-centred design community and as a senior leader will actively encourage, facilitate, and demonstrate sharing of insights and practices within the community and across the organisation.
• report to the Lead Service Designer. As a member of the UCD team, you will embody inclusive practices and have a real passion for building compelling user centric experiences, designing stand-out, equitable and inclusive services, and transforming organisational culture.

Person specification

See attached full job description for the full list of responsibilities and essential and desirable criteria

Please be aware that we will assess on the seven essential criteria stated on the advert rather than the full list on the job description document.

Essential criteria:

• Expert practitioner in service and/or interaction design with experience of using user-centred design methods and practices in large, complex organisations
• Able to navigate stakeholder landscapes, leading and managing relationships with a variety of internal and external stakeholders with different reporting relationships to improve services and gain support for standards, design solutions, roadmaps, and ways of working
• Able to select and use appropriate design methods and prototyping tools to explore service problems and opportunities across digital and non-digital channels as appropriate.
• Knowledge of the barriers to access which affect participation in public health interventions, able to demonstrate the importance of designing inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable public services, with understanding of best in class in inclusive service design
• Understanding of accessibility requirements in service design, including familiarity of: the government service manual guidance on testing and designing for accessibility at each stage of a service lifecycle; guidance on 2018 accessibility requirements for public sector bodies; and understanding of WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines for web development
• Proven leadership and line management skills with experience of leading, directing and planning the work of others across multiple teams, working directly with other professions to ensure effective and timely delivery
• Experience of working at a lead / senior level within a service or interaction design role or a Higher degree (MA MSc MBA) in a relevant subject and able to demonstrate an equivalent level of knowledge.