Service Designer – 9-Month Initial Contract

Service design tends to fall between the cracks. It doesn't sit neatly under architecture, but it sits right next to it, and on a big programme the service designer is usually the person who works out what the problem actually is before anyone starts building something to fix it.

[REDACTED] has been asked by a large public sector organisation to find a Service Designer for a long running national programme that is changing how people across New Zealand get access to an everyday public service. It has a lot of moving parts, a mix of digital and face to face channels, and a lot of people who have a stake in how it lands.

This is a hands on role. The programme already has senior design leadership, what they need now is someone who will be in the room with the people who use the service, their families, frontline staff and the providers who deliver it, running the research, making sense of what they hear and turning it into the journey maps, blueprints and other artefacts the programme will lean on for the rest of its life. Wellington is preferred but it isn't essential, the team is spread around the country so you'll need to be comfortable working with people you don't sit next to every day.

Unfortunately, if your last few years have been in design leadership or management rather than doing the work yourself, we are unlikely to be able to engage with you on this occasion, no matter how strong the rest of your background is. The client has been clear that they want someone at the coal face, and I would rather say it here than after you have sent a CV.

Public sector experience will help, as will experience designing with Māori and Pacific communities, but strong human centred design practice matters more than the sector.

Role: Service Designer
Location: Wellington preferred, open to other NZ locations
Start Date: ASAP
Contract Length: 9 month Initial Contract
Flexibility: Full time
Rate: $110ph - $125ph + GST
Skills: Human centred design, design research, consumer and stakeholder engagement, journey mapping, service blueprinting

What you'd be doing

• Planning and running research with service users, frontline staff and providers
• Pulling that research together into insights the programme can actually act on
• Building and keeping current the artefacts: journey maps, personas, service blueprints, current and future state service models
• Running co-design sessions with people who don't always agree with each other
• Working alongside product, policy, operational and architecture colleagues so the design makes it into delivery rather than sitting in a deck

What they're looking for

• Recent, hands on service design work, with examples or a portfolio you can walk us through
• Research you have run yourself, not just commissioned or overseen
• Comfort with a large, ambiguous public sector programme and a long list of stakeholders
• You can write and present clearly, because your artefacts will be read by people making funding and policy decisions

[REDACTED] is a boutique architecture partner. We don't often advertise service design roles, but we work alongside service designers all the time and the good ones are some of the most valuable people on a programme. We engage people as associates, so you would be engaged by [REDACTED] and working on the client's programme as part of our network, with us staying involved the whole way through rather than disappearing once you've started. We also run [REDACTED], the NZ architecture community.