Senior Interaction Designer - DESNZ - SEO

The Integrated Corporate Services (ICS) is a new shared corporate service, launched in July 2023. It provides corporate services (HR, Finance, Digital, Commercial, Security and Estates) across the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) and the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT).  

Our team of just over 300 professionals will be leading the way in how these functions will be delivered in the future. Our ambition is to be the leading provider of integrated corporate services for government and set the standard for quality, efficiency, and innovation in our field.   

We offer great working benefits including a world-class pension, flexible working options and a career where your learning and development is taken seriously. We are enormously proud to be a Disability Confident Leader employer. We support candidates with adjustments throughout our recruitment process. Information about disability confidence and just some examples of the adjustments that you can request can be found in the reasonable adjustment section below.  

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy. 

Find Out More 

You can also follow our LinkedIn Careers Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/desnz-careers/  

Job description

Join ICS Digital, where innovation meets expertise to create digital solutions. We are a cohesive digital community who work in the open, solving problems together and fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. Our commitment to user-focused design and data-driven decision-making ensures that we deliver accessible services tailored to the needs of our customers.

The UCD team

You will sit in the User-Centred Design (UCD) team alongside our user researchers, service designers, content designers, interaction designers and business analysts.     

We work across high profile and high priority projects for DESNZ and DSIT. Recently we have responded to energy price rises, grant delivery and energy sustainability for Net Zero.     

We are agile, collaborative and user centred. We are a welcoming community where you can develop your skills and career, and we want you to bring your whole self to work.  

Your role within the team

We support Departments by delivering core technology services which help them achieve strategic and policy objectives. We put the user at the heart of what we do, and we take an interactive approach to service delivery. Our decisions are driven by data and we work collaboratively with partners to continue to deliver exceptional services.

We are looking for driven, forward-thinking people with strong people skills who enjoy working collaboratively with others to solve problems.

This is a new profession within the department, which means you will take part in actively contributing to ways of working and internal guidelines.

As an interaction designer you will work with teams across ICS, DESNZ and DSIT to make sure that public-facing services and internal systems meet user needs.

You will help teams understand the problem they're trying to solve, and who their users are.

You will create low and high-fidelity prototypes and work with developers to ensure the designs are feasible.

You will facilitate workshops with cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.

You are an excellent communicator who can simplify concepts and present them in a visually engaging way. You will be part of the Digital Directorate, which is a cross-departmental team that provides digital solutions and services to support the delivery of DESNZ and DSIT’s objectives. We follow agile principles and practices to deliver high-quality products that meet user needs.

We are a small but growing team with a keen sense of community. We care about the way we work, how we treat each other, the quality of our services and how we make a difference for our customers. This is an exciting opportunity to advance your career and develop your skills within a supportive and encouraging team. We are passionate about career development and offer a diverse range of learning and development opportunities. We have partnerships with leaders in professional development, such as Pluralsight and CITF.

Visit our blog to learn more about us and our work: https://icsdigital.blog.gov.uk/

Person specification

Key responsibilities

As an interaction designer, you will:

• Analyse and interpret user needs and business requirements to create visual solutions to complex problems.
• Ensure that designs balance technical feasibility with simple, delightful interfaces.
• Design prototypes to test with users, ensuring that they align with main research priorities.
• Advocate for inclusive design and research, ensuring full inclusion and understanding of users with access needs and those that require non-digital access or support.
• Manage and coach junior colleagues.
• Work closely with the Lead Interaction Designer to shape ways of working and guidelines for the profession.

Skills and experience

Essential criteria:

We would love to hear from you if you have experience:

• Creating prototypes (in Figma, gov.uk prototyping kit) based on user research.
• Collaborating with agile cross-functional teams to ensure that designs meet user needs whilst balancing business requirements.
• Facilitating workshops with different teams, users and stakeholders to drive alignment.
• Using strong visual communication to convey complex problems to senior stakeholders (visuals, reports etc.).
• Managing and coaching junior colleagues and ensure development and career progression.

The below experience would be beneficial but not essential as we will provide necessary training.

• Conducting user research and considering the wider end-to-end process of a service in the public sector.
• Working knowledge of WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards and how to use them to create accessible designs.
• Contributing to the creation of materials, guidelines and templates related to the profession.

It is unusual that all candidates will meet all the desirable criteria. If your skills and experience look slightly different from what we have identified and you think you can bring value to the User Researcher role and the team, we strongly encourage you to apply. We'd love to hear from you!

Please, no recruitment agencies 

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Designing strategically
• Iterative design