Service Designer

Service designers consider and design the end-to-end journey of a service. They are concerned with helping users complete their goals and helping organistions meet their needs. This includes creating or changing, products, services, transactions and content across all channels. They should consider the digital channels and offline channels such as contact centres and physical mail.

Core skills

Agile ways of working

You have experience of agile ways of working and can apply an agile mindset to all of your work. You are comfortable with uncertainty, can work in a fast paced environment. You design things using an iterative and flexible approach so that you can course correct as you learn new things.

You are comfortable with failure, taking risks and learn from this to make better products.

Communication

You can communicate effectively to all levels of an organisation regardless of technical or domain knowledge. You understand how to make complex language simple so that it is accessible by all. You can communicate what a team does to create trust within an organisation and can respond to challenges.

Team collaboration.

You help build successful teams by understanding different team styles and influencing work whilst motivating others. You know how to give and receive feedback about using the SMART, STAR or other model to ensure it is valuable. You work to towards small closed feedback loops when working iteratively.

You can facilitate conflict resolution within and between teams. You encourage the team to be open and transparent so that their work can be understood outside of the team. You help maintain the teams' focus on interactive delivery whilst supporting professional development.

You know when to lead and when to support teams. You seek to unblock others.

Digital landscape

You are are of how technology is changing and affecting user behaviour. You can make informed decisions based on user needs, available technology effort and value for money.

Evidence based design

You can understand, articulate and solve complex problems and concepts. You can use logical thinking, gather information and use evidence from research to make decisions. You can move from analysis to synthesis to design intent.

Working within constraints

You are comfortable working within constraints such as:

• technology
• regulatory
• financial
• legal

You know how to challenge constraints which may need to change. You can adapt products or services to work within existing constraints.

Facilitating decisions and managing risk

You can make and help guide others to make effective decisions and articulate how and why the decision was made. You are comfortable running collaborative design activities, influencing others and building consensus. You understand what is risky, why it is carries risk and seek to mitigate risk where possible

Prototyping

You understand what is important to learn from a prototype and focus your efforts on what will allow you to learn the most. You can prototype in a variety or ways (code, digital or physical prototypes, scripts and more). You can communicate well with developers and understand when to switch to code. You understand security, accessibility and version control.

Strategic thinking

You can maintain an overall focus on business issues, events and activities. You understand their wider and long term implications. You can focus on outcomes rather than solutions and activities.

User focus

You understand that you are not the user and seek to understand those who are, and what their needs are. You are comfortable writing user stories and can propose design approaches or services to meet these need. You put users first and manage competing priorities.