Service Designer

Are you looking to make an impact? We are looking for a Service Designer to support our client in the Department of State. In your work and through your design expertise you will improve experiences with government services for millions of people, and thus have a positive impact on their lives and wellbeing.

In this position, you will be working in and with small, cross-functional teams of researchers, designers, product managers, and technical practitioners to understand customer needs and strategize improved service delivery. If you have experience integrating HCD practices into the enhancement of impactful, scalable services, and enjoy simplifying complexity into intuitive experiences, we’d love to hear from you. Previous experience working in a client services organization (i.e., consulting or a digital agency) is helpful but not required. A passion for our mission and civic design is a must-have.

How will you spend your time? 90% of your time will be spent on billable work – delivering positive, accessible, and impactful customer experiences – and roughly 10% of your time will be spent helping to evolve our HCD practice at MO.

What You’ll Do

• Customer-Centric Discovery: Implement approaches to discovery that establish clear research objectives, involve customers directly to understand their lived experiences and desires, and provide stakeholders with deeper insights into the environment, key opportunities, and challenges to address.
• Customer Insights and Design Opportunities: Proactively capture customer insights and design opportunities to support product managers in translating these insights into user stories and service requirements.
• Prototype Design and Testing: Design, test, and rapidly iterate on service prototypes to evaluate assumptions with customers, co-create additional solutions with them to more closely address their needs, and thus iteratively move towards the envisioned state of service delivery.
• Deliverable Creation: Create comprehensive deliverables that drive the service vision, utilizing a mix of research findings, experience principles, stakeholder and ecosystem maps, process flows, storyboards, customer profiles, journey maps, and service blueprints.
• Metrics & Impact: Analyze and interpret data and metrics to measure the effectiveness and impact of service designs. Utilize data-driven insights to make informed design decisions.

What We Are Looking For

• Passion for Social Impact Design: A strong desire to create positive social impact through design, demonstrated by at least 2+ years of experience in design and team collaboration on complex service design projects with diverse stakeholder relationships.
• Design Proficiency: Proficiency in at least four of the following capabilities: service design, design and user research, CX, UX, interaction design, UI, visual design, content design, design systems, design for behavior change and/or measurement and evaluation.
• Growth Mindset and Collaboration: A growth mindset and a love for continuous learning and exploration of new ideas and working methods. You should be adept at architecting radically collaborative environments with empathy, encouraging behaviors that lead to transformative experiences, and be willing to seek feedback, help and guidance when needed.
• User Advocacy and Accessibility: Strong user advocacy skills with the ability to simplify complex processes into service blueprints, user-friendly workflows, and interfaces. Fluency in accessibility standards and the ability to design according to established design systems.
• Design Tools and Prototyping Experience: Proficiency in modern design platforms such as Sketch, Figma, and Mural, as well as experience working in design systems and applying agile methodologies and toolsets to create user stories (e.g., GitHub, Backlog). Experience with various prototyping methods, ranging from card sorts and paper/hand-drawn wireframes to mid/higher fidelity digital prototypes.
• Collaborative Integration: Ability to integrate and collaborate across design, product management, and engineering disciplines to identify priorities and create a shared understanding of UX and broader product direction.
• Consultative Approach and User Advocacy: A consultative approach with the ability to understand client expectations, work effectively as a team, and take accountability for delivering solutions that meet user needs. Strong advocacy for human-centered design (HCD) practices to ensure accessibility and inclusivity.