Senior Service Designer

As Senior Service Designer, you’ll report to the AVP Innovation and Research and create service experiences that are designed around the people that use them. Service & interaction design are at the heart of our innovation process. Our diverse team of strategic, empathetic thinkers and deep interaction specialists envision and craft experiences from service design to digital product creation and every enabler in between. You will be a champion for user needs, improve business processes, streamline systems, and help cut bureaucratic red tape. You’ll work with other designer practitioners, product managers, and technologists to analyze services, map user experiences across channels (for both staff and the public), communicate ideas, and lead change management.

You are a thought leader that guides, influences and shapes experiences throughout the organization which will ultimately lead to the transformation of public transportation. You will work on efforts that may range from designing a smoother experience for on train services, to detangling the complex journey from origination to destination and every interaction in between. You will work with teammates to create frameworks and strategies that guide our future products, platforms and services like rail station centered cities for example. Your work will develop service patterns and best practices that can be applied across the country.

This is leadership role driving strategy and execution of the innovation team within the Digital Technology organization that will include research, experience strategy, interaction and visual design. Key to your success will be a positive spirit, the ability to create partnerships across the complexities of a large organization, and a relentless ability to re-imagine the future of public transportation. You will be looked to as a trusted partner and problem solver, determinedly helping all stakeholders overcome obstacles and guiding solutions forward through the service design practice.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Facilitate the creation of aligned, strategic visions for department services
• Organize and facilitate workshops that bring together users and stakeholders to unpack a service’s challenges and propose new solutions
• Uncover user needs through research, develop deep insights, generate concepts, and craft how people will interact with the products and services we create
• Explain, discuss, and justify design decisions eloquently and give effective feedback and direction to more junior members of the team
• Frame and tell the story of design solutions and present the communication of research findings, conceptual ideas, detailed design, and design rationale both verbally and visually
• Leverage the insights, patterns, and desires from partner department efforts to inform the roadmaps and priorities of digital services’ platforms and products
• Analyze how policies, interpersonal dynamics, history, and organizational structure impact service delivery
• Help partner departments navigate changing touchpoints, tools, and processes, determining the impact on current operations and how much change they can take on with each iteration
• Create deliverables to express design solutions to the team and our partners, such as wireframes, service blueprints, screen designs, storyboards, user experience journey maps, and system maps
• Identify, document, and leverage repeatable service patterns across efforts
• Be an Amtrak ambassador, attending and helping to plan studio and community events, workshops, and conferences

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree experience design discipline
• Experience planning, designing, facilitating, and synthesizing workshops
• Experience with driving and applying user-centered design processes
• Experience creating experience maps, user journeys and service blueprints, interaction models, flows, and wireframes
• Experience with rapid prototyping methods, ranging from paper sketching to digital prototypes
• Experience with requirements gathering and communication between all design teams, workstreams and clients
• Familiarity with rapid prototyping methods, ranging from paper sketching to digital prototypes
• Able to be practical and resourceful to remove blockers and get things done
• 9+ years’ experience of interaction design and/or service design across varied users, business problems, and devices
• Expert knowledge of applying user-centered design processes
• Master areas of specialization within the greater design landscape, including but not limited to design research, visual design, and content design
• Strong experience creating service design outputs including user journey maps, service architecture diagrams, systems maps, user profiles, and service blueprints
• Strong experience using a variety of methods to communicate findings and proposals, including presentations, prototypes, storyboards, and visual frameworks
• Strong facilitation skills, with experience in both planning and leading workshops
• Ability to communicate the big picture to decision makers and the complex details to technical and subject matter experts
• Ability to guide change in business processes and systems
• Experience strategically incorporating research into the innovation process and familiarity with a variety of research methodologies

COMMUNICATIONS AND INTERPERSONAL SKILLS:

• Must have excellent oral and written communication skills.