Lead, Service Designer

Service Design Magazine; Ottawa; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Canadian Blood Services is seeking a Temporary Full-time Lead, Service Designer – Donor Experience to join our Insights & Donor Experience team in Toronto or Ottawa. You will shape end-to-end donor experiences by translating strategy into usable designs and coordinating improvement pilots.

Leverage your design thinking, journey mapping, and stakeholder facilitation skills to drive data-informed improvements across operations, technology, and frontline teams in a fast-paced, collaborative

Qualifications

• Experience analyzing qualitative and quantitative data to understand donor experiences.
• Proficiency with digital design and visualization tools.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team with tight deadlines.
• Experience creating journey maps, service blueprints, concepts, and storyboards.
• Comfort applying systems thinking to complex service ecosystems.

Responsibilities

• Lead workshops, journey mapping sessions, and co-creation activities to build stakeholder alignment.
• Coordinate experience improvement pilots and scale effective solutions.
• Translate donor experience strategy into practical, insight-driven improvements.
• Deliver clear reporting and track progress for continuous improvement.
• Present insights to diverse audiences and influence decisions.
• Apply systems thinking to frontstage and backstage experiences for cross-functional impact.

Skills

Human-centered design

Service design

Design thinking

Workshop facilitation

Journey mapping

Systems thinking

Stakeholder coordination

Education

Post-secondary education in human-centered/service design or related field

Tools

Figma

Miro

Smaply

Qualtrics

Lean

Agile

Six Sigma

Job description

About the role

Canadian Blood Services is looking for a Temporary Full-time Lead, Service Designer – Donor Experience to join our dynamic Insights & Donor Experience team in Toronto or Ottawa.

The Insights and Donor Experience team plays a key role in turning data into meaningful insights that drive informed decisions, create exceptional donor experiences, and support the growth of our donor base through innovative research, analytics, and experience design.

Reporting to the Manager, Donor Experience Strategy and Design, you will help shape and improve the end-to-end donor experience by connecting strategy with execution. You will coordinate experience improvement pilots, gather and analyze donor feedback, and apply design thinking and user-centred approaches to identify opportunities for enhancement. Working collaboratively across teams, you will help translate donor experience strategy into practical, insight-driven solutions that support continuous improvement.

Formula for success

• Leveraging your expertise in human-centred design and service design methodologies, you will uncover donor needs, synthesize research insights, and translate them into improvements that enhance end-to-end, integrated donor experiences
• Drawing on your facilitation and collaboration skills, you will lead workshops, journey mapping sessions, and co-creation activities that build stakeholder alignment and advance experience design initiatives from concept to implementation
• Applying your analytical mindset, you will interpret donor, frontline, and operational feedback to identify trends, uncover opportunities, and recommend meaningful service enhancements.
• Utilizing your project coordination abilities, you will support the planning and execution of pilots and improvement initiatives, helping to test, refine, and scale effective solutions.
• Harnessing your proficiency with journey mapping, service blueprinting and, design tools, you will visualize experiences, identify pain points, backstage dependencies, and contribute to practical, donor-focused improvements.
• Demonstrating strong organizational skills and attention to detail, you will maintain accurate records, track progress, and deliver clear reporting that supports continuous improvement.
• Leveraging your communication and presentation skills, you will deliver effective and engaging presentations to a variety of audiences, tailoring your approach to share insights, influence decisions, and build stakeholder alignment.
• Applying systems thinking, you will consider both frontstage and backstage experiences to identify opportunities that improve experience, operational effectiveness and cross-functional.

Desired education and skills

• Post-secondary education related discipline (e.g., Human-Centered Design, Service Design, Design Thinking, business, psychology, cognitive science, or a related field). An equivalent combination of education, training and experience may be considered.
• Expertise in analyzing and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data from multiple sources to develop a holistic understanding of donor experiences and inform improvements.
• Proficiency with digital design and visualization tools (e.g., Figma, Miro, Smaply, Qualtrics).
• Familiarity with process improvement frameworks (e.g., Lean, Agile, Six Sigma).
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team environment with tight deadlines.
• Analytical mindset with the ability to critically assess current-state experiences, identify root causes and translate insights into actionable recommendations .
• Experience creating and communicating design artefacts such as journey maps, service blueprints, concepts, and storyboards.
• Comfort working within complex service ecosystems and applying systems thinking to improve donor experience.
• Experience working with cross functional teams including operations, technology, marketing, digital, call centre and business partners to deliver service improvements.
• Strong interpersonal, workshop facilitation skills, with the ability to engage diverse stakeholders and build alignment across multidisciplinary teams.