Senior Service Designer: Reimagine NZ Planning Experience

Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development NZ; Wellington; On-site; NZD 112,000 - 136,000; Full time

Job summary

The Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) is seeking a Senior Service Designer to champion the user perspective within MCERT and the Planning System Transformation programme. You will bridge the gap between reform and how New Zealanders interact with the new system.

You will work with business analysts, solution architects, and subject matter experts to design end-to-end service experiences that make the new planning system simpler, faster, and fairer.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in service design: demonstrated ability to design and deliver complex end-to-end services in a public sector or highly regulated environment. You can show how you have translated complex policy or business rules into intuitive human experiences
• Human-centred design expertise: deep knowledge of design thinking methodologies, including user research, persona development, journey mapping, and service blueprinting
• Workshop planning, facilitation and requirements capture: Experience creating and facilitating workshops and applying different research approaches to capture participant insights. Adept at theming insights and using these to create supporting design artefacts, including service blueprints
• Understanding of digital transformation: experience working in large-scale digital transformation programmes. You understand how services need to be designed considering the people, process, and technology dynamics while being mindful of technology debt avoidance
• Te Tiriti o Waitangi & Māori data sovereignty: understanding of Te Tiriti obligations in a digital context Experience in co-designing with Māori and understanding the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty is highly desirable
• Federated/complex system experience: experience designing for systems where service delivery is distributed rather than centralised, understanding the friction between national consistency and local autonomy
• Agile delivery: practical experience working in Agile environments, supporting product owners and development teams to ensure the user voice is maintained throughout the build cycle
• Communication and influence: excellent storytelling and visual communication skills. You can translate user insights into compelling narratives that influence senior leadership and policy decisions
• Government design awareness: familiarity with the NZ Government Web Standards, Accessibility Standards, and the Digital Service Design Standard is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Workshop planning and facilitation: creating the agenda for and facilitating workshops with different groups of stakeholders to effectively and efficiently achieve the desired outcomes for the workstream
• Service blueprints and journey maps: visualise complex regulatory processes to identify opportunities for automation, simplification, and integration across central and local government systems
• Prototyping and testing: lead the design and testing of key digital products to ensure they meet user needs before full technical build
• Design standards: contribute to the creation of national data and design standards that ensure a consistent user experience regardless of which region a user is operating in
• Stakeholder alignment: facilitate workshops with disparate groups (policy, legal, technical, and operational) to align on a shared vision for the digital service experience.

Skills

Service design

Human-centered design

Workshop facilitation

Digital transformation

Te Tiriti and Māori data sovereignty

Federated/complex systems

Agile delivery

Communication & influence

Government design awareness

Job description

The Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) is seeking a Senior Service Designer to champion the user perspective within MCERT and the Planning System Transformation programme. You will bridge the gap between reform and how New Zealanders interact with the new system.

You will work with business analysts, solution architects, and subject matter experts to design end-to-end service experiences that make the new planning system simpler, faster, and fairer.