Senior Service Designer

As a skilled Senior Service Designer, you’ll be motivated to support and protect our communities by delivering better services to people living in the UK and beyond.

Our projects support major life events such as getting married or visiting another country. Or more complex issues like exploring how the police can better protect vulnerable members of our community, or how refugees can be better supported to rebuild their lives.

You’ll be passionate about delivering simple, accessible, and satisfying services, taking a leading role on projects to shape the approach and guide delivery. You are able to work at pace as part of a multi-disciplinary team and are comfortable working across several smaller services or on one larger programme of work. You’ll be skilled at designing for both the front stage and behind the scenes and use data to inform your design decisions and measure service outcomes.

This role is within the Centre for Digital Design, part of the Police & Public Protection Technology Team. CDD provides support and expertise to portfolios in achieving the Home Office ambition to transform digital public services and deliver world class digital technology and systems by utilising a blended team of experts in Product, Delivery, Design and Research who support programmes hands-on with transitioning from ‘project’ to ‘product’.

Day-to-day, you will be part of a project team and will work with team members and stakeholders to:

• explore and understand the problem space
• ensure services are accessible, inclusive and meet the needs of users
• resolve discrepancies between service design approach and organisational aims
• promote the benefits of user-centred design

You’ll also look after junior staff through line management, mentoring, or training, as well as participating in recruitment activities.

Responsibilities

Your main day to day responsibilities will be: 

• Lead service design work on projects and ensure that delivery teams are taking a user-centred, evidence-based approach
• Create compelling service solutions by identifying opportunities to improve the performance or management of existing services, and drawing on findings from user research, data patterns, policy and operational intent and technical architecture
• Engage with senior stakeholders, presenting project findings and related recommendations to senior decision makers across government
• Rapidly create sketches, diagrams and lo-fi prototypes to share and test ideas
• Coach and co-ordinate multidisciplinary teams to help them successfully design good services
• Raise awareness of what good service design looks like by sharing valuable case studies, methods, tools, artefacts and standards across the Home Office and to the wider community​

You will also be expected to carry out the following day to day activities:  

• present project findings and related recommendations to senior decision makers across government
• identify and raise any blockers to design activities to the leadership team

Essential Skills

You’ll have a demonstrable passion for user-centred design, with the following skills or strong experience in:  

• analysing complex systems and services, to identify opportunities for cost reduction and improvement
• designing and implementing services across people, process, and technology, front stage and back stage to ensure that user needs and target outcomes are being met
• structuring and managing the design process, framing problems and identifying measurable target outcomes to minimise ambiguity and align effort
• effectively communicating complex information and ideas through diagrams, visualisations and written narratives
• engaging with stakeholders at all levels, advocating for user centred ways of working and managing expectations as needed
• considering the needs of diverse audiences to design accessible and inclusive services

Our skills align with the cross gov DDaT Capability Framework ​​

Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)​

Desirable skills 

Ideally you will also have the following skills or some experience in:  

• working in an agile development environment, creating new digital services as part of a multidisciplinary team
• working autonomously, while managing multiple deadlines and responding to changing priorities
• engaging colleagues who are less familiar with user-centred design
• familiarity with the Government Service Standard
• line managing, coaching and mentoring to develop skills of team members

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• analysis of complex systems and services
• designing to meet user needs
• measuring outcomes
• communicating complex ideas creatively and effectively
• designing for accessibility and inclusion