Lead Service Designer

Government Recruitment Service; Tees Valley; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A government agency in the United Kingdom is looking for a Lead Service Designer to identify gaps in existing services and create new user-centered solutions. The ideal candidate will advocate for users, collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, and communicate effectively with stakeholders. Key responsibilities include leading service design efforts, tracking user interactions, and mentoring other designers to ensure quality service delivery. This role offers the opportunity to influence design direction and promote service design across the department.

Qualifications

• Experience in user-centered design practices.
• Proven stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to create prototypes and test ideas.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of user journeys to meet user needs.
• Communicate insights and strategies to stakeholders.
• Create high-quality deliverables like personas and service blueprints.
• Mentor and manage design team members.

Skills

User-centered design

Stakeholder management

Prototyping

Service design expertise

Analytical skills

Job description

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has a clear mission - to grow the economy. Our role is to help businesses invest, grow and export to create jobs and opportunities right across the country. We do this in three ways.

Firstly, we help to build a strong, competitive business environment, where consumers are protected and companies rewarded for treating their employees properly.

Secondly, we open international markets and ensure resilient supply chains. This can be through Free Trade Agreements, trade facilitation and multilateral agreements.

Finally, we work in partnership with businesses every day, providing advance, finance and deal-making support to those looking to start up, invest, export and grow.

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate develops and operates tools and services to support us in this mission. The team have been nominated four times in a row for ‘Best Public Sector Employer’ at the Women in Tech awards!

As a Lead Service Designer at DBT you will identify gaps and opportunities in existing services as well as look for opportunities to create new ones. Working in a usercentred multidisciplinary team alongside researchers, developers, and other designers, you’ll bring a wide view of the landscape as well as be the voice of the user and business. You'll collaborate with product managers and service owners to help understand and communicate the complexities of our services.

You will create visions, strategies, and roadmaps to help guide teams and stakeholders while documenting holistic user journeys to communicate and help make and understand key decisions. We’re looking for someone who will be able to analyse existing services to understand pain and failure points as well as actively promoting good design rational with the team and to stakeholders to ensure quality outcomes.

To be effective in this position, you will need to understand the needs of users and stakeholders and be able to communicate this in an engaging way, whether this is by creating prototypes to test an idea and inspire the team and stakeholders or creating design patterns that can be used across our services to ensure consistency and scalability.

Main responsibilities

You will:

• Understand and advocate for user needs, ensuring services are designed to meet them. Lead communication with colleagues across DBT to define user journeys and articulate product visions.
• Engage and manage stakeholder needs, driving the communication of insights and strategies to senior stakeholders and management.
• Track user interactions across boundaries, create user journeys to highlight pain points and improvements, and design systems across multiple services, ensuring simple and evidence-based outcomes.
• Demonstrate expertise in service design, helping others understand its value, and lead evidence-based design direction. Create high-quality deliverables like personas, experience maps, and service blueprints.
• Lead on the analysis of research findings, identify improvement opportunities, and communicate design solutions that address user needs and business outcomes and use prototyping methods to share ideas with real users and encourage collaboration.
• Bring the team and stakeholders along the journey, ensuring feedback is incorporated, and act as an authority on service design, managing, training, and mentoring other designers, leading the capability and promotion of service design within the department and across government.
• Identify cost-saving opportunities while implementing best practice service design, promoting best practice and build a collaborative culture within the Service Design team.