Service Design Lead

Substantial is seeking senior-level Service Designers to work on a contract basis with our ongoing clients. It is expected that candidates can lead design research and service design end to end. This includes protocol development, discovery research and insights synthesis with participants. Candidates also should have experience designing and facilitating workshops, and creating toolkits, service blueprints, and system maps. Preference will be given to candidates who have experience working with equity centered design research or implementing liberatory design methodologies.

Our portfolio is always evolving but here is an overview of one of our projects:

The Client: Non-profit partner working in K12

The Project: Understanding demographics, experience and needs for K12 students impacted by systemic racism and poverty.

The Expertise: Senior or lead level service designer with client-facing discovery research experience who can facilitate research protocol development and conduct interviews with stakeholders and experts. The designer will support insights synthesis and collaborate with the client to develop toolkits, maps and blueprints while centering equity in the process, methods, and approach.

Expected Duration: 10 months

Weekly Time Commitment: 15-30 hours

Here is a broad description of what you’ll do and the basic requirements for joining us as a contractor.

In your day-to-day you will:

• Lead a small team of researchers and designers to execute against the project expectations
• Bring a strong equity and anti-racist mindset to your work
• Lead system research and review existing literature or research in the space
• Bring a collaborative approach to developing research protocol, interviews, or discussion guides
• Visualize and map research, insights, and opportunities
• Be a strong storyteller to share insights with clients, stakeholders, and the design field
  • You use narrative structures, visuals and other modalities to tell stories about the work
• Exercise authority in determining short and long term design needs, objectives, and approaches
• Take on various tasks to support different processes and needs on your project teams
• Collaborate directly every day with designers, developers, engagement managers, and clients
• Balance time between directly working on research, gathering feedback from the larger team, and executing against client and team feedback
• Design and facilitate workshops with lived experts, clients, or other stakeholders
• Provide recommendations to update processes, methodologies, and approaches
• Support and mentor junior designers

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of design research experience in a client services or agency environment
• Proven experience leading projects in a professional environment in various design roles
• Experience or familiarity with a range of research methodologies across foundational and generative research
• Proficiency in communicating insights clearly at the executive level
• Strong communication, client services, and interpersonal skills
• Fierce passion for collaboration and growing with others

Benefits

This is a 1099 contract position based on specific project work with our clients.