Service Design (Manager)

The Opportunity

The Manager, Service and Experience Design is responsible for supporting and leading components of various innovation initiatives that have the potential of accelerating Feeding America’s progress toward the vision of a hunger-free America. These initiatives will range in structure from collaborations within the Feeding America National Office, alongside the Feeding America Network and in direct collaborations with external partners. This position will help to lead collaborative efforts to design new or enhancing existing services that include digital and non-digital touchpoints, while helping to foster a culture of innovation for Feeding America. Candidates should have experience working with teams that create and deliver digital products and services using human-centered design and agile methods, with a good foundation of what good looks like. This role will help the Feeding America network design services around food insecure neighbor’s needs in collaboration with people with lived experience and our Food Bank and Food Pantry partners.

Salary Range: $66,000 to $85,000+ Based on Experience

Responsibilities:

Design and Inform the Development of New Products, Services and Feature Enhancements

• Deploy human-centered design research methods to learn, define deep insights, generate concepts that lead to enhanced or new features, products, and services.
• Utilize the right rapid prototyping methods including paper, physical and digital to validate and refine concepts and product functionality.
• Think outside the screen, using tools like service blueprints and user journeys to describe the human touchpoints within systems and how backend processes need to support the experience.
• Screen and assess ideas and concepts for desirability, feasibility, viability, differentiation, etc.
• Design, execute and interpret lean experiments and pilots.

Connect, Convene, Manage

• Frame and tell the story of design solutions. Present the communication of research findings, conceptual ideas, detailed design, and design rationale both verbally and visually.
• Lead and manage collaborative projects with cross-functional teams, including Food Banks and people with lived experience from planning through implementation of field work, prototyping, experiments and pilot tests, to co-create meaningful experiences.
• Support the enhancement of existing products and services in collaboration with cross-functional teams, including product managers and engineers, where there is a strategic opportunity to define and create better experiences.
• Facilitate workshops and co-design sessions with people from different backgrounds, roles and organizations.

Foundational Requirements

• Mission Focused – Demonstrates a commitment to Feeding America’s mission through word and action. Is committed to keeping people facing hunger at the center of our work and strives to translate this commitment into action on a daily basis. Willing to advocate for people facing hunger and serve as an ambassador for Feeding America inside and outside of work.
• Embraces Equity, Diversity and Inclusion – Demonstrates a personal commitment to valuing different backgrounds and life experiences through word and action. Takes personal actions to build an inclusive culture that ensures everyone can fully contribute based on their unique talents, skills and perspectives and feels welcomed and valued. Commits to driving equitable solutions to address root cause issues by incorporating an equity framework in their daily work.  Committed to continuous personal EDI development.

Required Leadership Competencies

• Fosters Innovation and Continuously Improves: Analyzes current practices, policies, and procedures to find areas for improvement and incorporate best practices. Leverages continuous improvement tools and mindset when designing and implementing projects and processes.  Committed to team and personal learning.
• Drives Change: Leverages data-based observation, interpretation and intervention to engage stakeholders in shaping and implementing solutions.  Engages in constructive dialogue to move change forward with empathy and sensitivity for differing views.
• Collaborates Internally & Externally: Actively supports collaboration within and between departments and with key stakeholders.   Seeks input and resolves issues with a focus on mission and what’s best for the people we serve.
• Leverages Functional Expertise: Leverages advanced functional knowledge to shape decisions and plans.  Uses professional experience to fix processes and make improvements to practices, policies, and procedures.  Tracks latest practices and innovations and ways these could improve processes within the organization.

Required Technical Competencies, Experience, Certifications & Education

• Three to five years of in-depth knowledge and experience of Interaction Design and Service Design across varied users, business problems, and devices.
• Comfortable with the details, capable of seeing the whole picture and knowing when to use the right approach, including experience maps, user journeys and service blueprints, interaction models, flows, and wireframes and prototyping and wireframing tools like Adobe Creative Suite, and Figma Sketch or InVision.
• Strong project management skills working across multiple organizations, while ensuring appropriate resourcing levels are maintained.
• Strong visual communicator and ability to create artefacts to share insights with stakeholders to support ideation and concept generation.
• A holistic understanding of people, technology, data and their interdependencies.
• Understanding of one or more emerging areas specialization within the greater design landscape, including but not limited to Participatory design, Equity centered design, Systemic design, Behavioral Insights, HCI, Service and UI Patterns.
• Lived experience and previous experience working in the social sector strongly valued.