Service Designer

Maximus Federal is growing our Total Experience Solutions and Services (TXSS) organization to better serve the needs of our federal customers, and to continually improve citizen services and experiences. The Total Experiences Solutions and Services team is a group of skilled practitioners who are laser-focused on solving the most complex 21st century government challenges to build trust people have in the federal government. We aim to deliver services that are simple, seamless, and secure for all people. We use approaches grounded in design thinking, lean, and agile to help solve customer challenges, and shape Maximus’ Customer Experience (CX) go-to-market strategy across our federal services.

We are looking for a Senior Service Designer with experience contributing to and playing a key role in the design of end-to-end customer journeys by developing concepts, prototypes, and solutions based on evidence of customer needs and organizational outcomes for federal agencies. We value diversity and inclusion and are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute their unique perspectives. You will lead and champion a human-centered design process and culture to solve service, customer, and employee experience challenges, ensuring that all voices are heard and considered. Working in a cross-functional team you will organize and guide engaging workshops and conversations, and help set project direction to uncover unmet needs, pain points and opportunities to ultimately achieve greater outcomes and experiences. If you’re an innovator and storyteller who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and support the public sector to make the government work for all, we would love to hear from you.

This position is remote however, you must reside in the Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia area to accommodate onsite federal client meetings and team meetings at corporate headquarters in Tysons Corner, VA.
Ability to travel as required up to 50%. Given the dynamic nature of the team and the need to be responsive to our customers’ needs, some travel may be coordinated on short notice.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
•Orchestrate and lead collaborative workshops with government clients, applying design thinking processes to uncover pain points, define vision and strategy, and develop innovative solutions to complex challenges with a focus on inclusivity.
•Facilitate discovery and innovation workshops for a wide spectrum of stakeholders, from senior leaders to front-line implementers, using human-centered and design thinking methods to drive co-creation of impactful solutions.
•Leverage adept group facilitation skills and a deep understanding of organizational dynamics to enhance the success of technology implementations, ensuring positive customer and employee experiences through collaborative problem-solving.
•Apply an iterative, design thinking process and lens to help clients solve complex problems in strategic planning, process improvement, technology adoption and evolution, and service delivery, considering diverse perspectives.
•Synthesize research and data, ensuring diverse experiences are considered, and craft compelling stories to communicate insights that will shape service and technology innovations.
•Create journey maps, service blueprints, personas, ecosystem, and experience maps that identify pain points and articulate and address customer and business needs for a given service.
•actionable recommendations for organizational and workflow change with a focus on inclusivity.
•Demonstrate how user research, inclusive of diverse perspectives, should be integrated into developing technology and new ways of working.
•Design and deliver customized, engaging, results-oriented interventions and workshops to improve organizational and team performance, fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace.
•Craft compelling stories and visual models to communicate insights and discoveries, ensuring representation and resonance with diverse audiences.
•Communicate with government stakeholders and decision-makers in compelling ways using a variety of visual mediums, considering diverse communication styles and preferences.
•Experience collaborating within a multi-disciplinary delivery team including other designers, technologists, data scientists, engineers, solution architects, and change managers, valuing and leveraging diverse skill sets.
•Informally serve as a mentor to others to develop their professional skills and improve the quality of their work.

Required Education, Experience, & Skills:
•Bachelor’s Degree (BA/BS) or higher in a creative or technical field such as Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Anthropology, Design, Organization Development, Design Innovation or equivalent combination of education and experience
•Minimum 7 years of experience working as a Service Designer or in a closely related role. 8 years preferred
•Proven record of planning and conducting HCD and research programs, developing insights, envisioning desirable human futures, and translating concepts into action, with an emphasis on diverse perspectives.
•A portfolio of work representing service design that influenced great insights or experiences.
•Familiarity with design and prototyping tools, such as: Figma, Sketch, InVision, Miro, Mural, and/or Adobe Creative Suite.
•Experience collaborating within a multi-disciplinary delivery team including other designers, technologists, data scientists, engineers, solution architects, and change managers.
•Experience in group facilitation, including with groups of senior organizational leaders.
•Designing for cross-channel experiences.
•Experience designing for data-heavy experiences and/or complex enterprise systems.
•Strong knowledge of product design processes.
•Exceptional oral and written communication and presentation skills, with proficiency in multiple methods of visual communication.
•Familiarity and/or experience working on a scrum team within the Agile delivery framework.
•Ability to work in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.
•A deep, natural curiosity and strong interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.
•Ability to be nimble through constant change and unexpected challenges.
•Strong negotiation and objection handling skills

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
– Contribute to the development of service design solutions and services that solve for today’s government service problems in innovative, feasible and desirable ways to bring transformative change to the citizens we serve and enable them to thrive and live better lives.

– Guide service design user engagements and research including observations, interviews, surveys, diaries, and other research methods.

– Champion a strategic, human-centered service design approach to create disruptive innovation and competitive differentiation.

– Support the business in moving ideas from high-level product vision and strategy through road mapping, planning, and execution

– Lead the design and facilitation of co-creation sessions, including immersion workshops, journey mapping and service blueprinting.

– Leverage a human-centered service design approach to rapidly gain deep understanding of citizen and organizational attitudes, behaviors, needs, pain points, opportunities, and aspirations to create innovative human service experiences.

– Frame design challenges, facilitate ideation, envision new concepts (challenge old ones), and rapidly prototype and evaluate designs.

– Use divergent design thinking techniques for the conceptual development of new experiences, products, services, processes and/or ecosystems, and converge innovative ideas to a set of digital and tangible solutions in partnership with team members, project stakeholders and business partners.

– Communicate insights, benefits, value propositions and design rationales to internal and external audiences in an intentional effort to move towards becoming a design-driven, people-centered organization.

– Create powerful narratives that communicate value propositions for the citizen and government using service models, customer journeys, storyboards, system maps, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and final design concepts.

Minimum Requirements:

– Bachelor’s degree in related field required.

– 7-10 years of relevant professional experience required.

– Human-Centered Design Certification, such as Service Design, Design Thinking, UX, etc.

– Experience leading and facilitating workshops, sometimes multiple engagements simultaneously.