Service designer
Business and administration
Level 6 -
Improve or redesign services currently offered and develop or design new service propositions to meet the needs of the user as well as the business and other stakeholders.
Reference: OCC0894
Status:
Technical Education Products
Employers involved in creating the standard:
Quality Care Commission, Cabinet Office, Cambridge and Peterborough Councils, Citizens Advice, Cancer Research, Hackney Council, Girl Guides, Public Health England, Practical Service Design, Department for Education, Red Cross, HMRC, NHS, Snook, Adur and Worthing Councils
Summary
This occupation is found in the private, public and third sector, local, national, and multinational organisations and employers. Relevant sectors include the health sector, finance sector, business and professional services, retail sector, technology sector, government, public sector, and the charity sector. There has been a growing demand for service design skills to be embedded within culture and governance structures to support future ways of working.
The broad purpose of the occupation is to improve/redesign services currently offered or develop/design new service propositions to meet the needs of the user as well as the business and other stakeholders. Service designers take a user-centred, collaborative and exploratory approach to design the new service, iterating toward implementation.
They work collaboratively with service/product owners and multidisciplinary teams; to (re)design services:
- from end to end (the start of a process to the very end step they take),
- from front to back (both user-facing and back office to create a seamless service) and
- cross-channel (to seamlessly and often interchangeably deliver the service through the various available platforms, which sometimes - but not always - include digital touch points).
In short, the purpose of a services designer is to (re)design services collaboratively and iteratively, taking a user-centred approach.
In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with a wide range of internal stakeholders, from front-line staff to service managers, senior leaders to heads of the organisation. If involved in the research, they also interact with a range of external stakeholders, which may include members of the public and individuals working in other organisations. They may, in large organisations, report to programme boards and to shareholders in private sector organisations. They often work in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams (through formal or informal arrangement) which may include marketing, finance, communications, logistics, project management, HR, digital (developers, systems/solutions architects) and user research.
Service Designers enable services to be (re)designed in a user/customer-centred way and therefore the most important stakeholder is the end user/service beneficiary.
An employee in this occupation will be responsible for guiding and facilitating the (re)design of a service, product, or solution; ensuring the work is user-centred. Increasingly, service designers design with the environment as a key stakeholder, creating services that serve the triple bottom line (profit, people, planet).
Service Designers are responsible for guiding, leading, facilitating and educating those involved in the (re)design, providing adequate challenge to ensure that they are responding to the right problem statement, that the scope of the work is appropriately sized and the limitations (i.e. with technology or the outcome an organisation wants to achieve) are understood to ensure anything (re)designed is viable.
They are responsible for selecting the most useful methodologies, tools, and techniques for use in the service design and continually work between a macro and micro view, ensuring the work has pace/is progressing and that the strategic view is not lost within the work.
Service Designers are expected to understand and contribute to budgets and return on investment considerations. In larger organisations, they may have management oversight of their own budgets.
Employers involved in creating the standard:
Quality Care Commission, Cabinet Office, Cambridge and Peterborough Councils, Citizens Advice, Cancer Research, Hackney Council, Girl Guides, Public Health England, Practical Service Design, Department for Education, Red Cross, HMRC, NHS, Snook, Adur and Worthing Councils
Typical job titles include:
Keywords:
Knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs)
Duties
Duty D1
Question and challenge the design brief in order to lead, influence and guide stakeholders to determine the scope of the service design work, both strategically and operationally.
Duty D2
Define and conduct research activities including primary/secondary research using both qualitative and quantitative data to fully understand users and their needs as well as the context of a service.
Duty D3
Synthesise research to build themes and clusters, find insights, and discover opportunity areas for improving the experience of the user.
Duty D4
Analyse, interpret and communicate complex information or data sets from the research to build a case and direction for change.
Duty D5
Develop multiple potential solutions to the design brief using ideation tools and techniques
Duty D6
Prototype, test with users and analyse potential solutions, making continuous improvements to designs and selecting ideas that best deliver the desired impact on a user’s experience of a service and the environmental and economic needs of the organisation.
Duty D7
Direct the transition from prototype into pilot projects through working with the service areas who will take this forward and lead on-going evaluation, including creating clear success metrics for the improved service.
Duty D8
Lead the design of services through engaging with and influencing stakeholders, colleagues, and service users.
Duty D9
Develop others with the skills needed to contribute to the work through coaching, mentoring, shadowing, working collaboratively or delivering training.
Duty D10
Manage time frames and guide budget decisions, working within organisational project management processes, and manage risks in order to meet business needs.
Duty D11
Manage and lead ongoing change and identify individuals and groups who are able to make a case for a service design approach for future change requirements.
Occupational Progression
This occupational progression map shows technical occupations that have transferable knowledge and skills.
In this map, the focused occupation is highlighted in yellow. The arrows indicate where transferable knowledge and skills exist between two occupations. This map shows some of the strongest progression links between the focused occupation and other occupations.
It is anticipated that individuals would be required to undertake further learning or training to progress to and from occupations. To find out more about an occupation featured in the progression map, including the learning options available, click the occupation.
Progression decisions have been reached by comparing the knowledge and skills statements between occupational standards, combined with individualised learner movement data.
Technical Occupations
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