Senior Interaction Designer - GDS - G7

GDS exists to help government make brilliant public services that empower people in the UK. We work at the very centre of government to drive digital transformation, focused on users. We build and maintain common platforms, products and tools for others to use and create great public services that are accessible, inclusive and easy to use. We also work with departments to identify patterns, share learning and create change to make government more efficient.

Our teams are organised around delivering on our priorities. These are:

• making it easier for people to find what they are looking for on GOV.UK
• building common service platforms to make it simpler and cheaper to build quality digital services
• promoting agile, user-centred design practices both in the UK and across the world

GOV.UK is the online home of government information and services. Every week GOV.UK supports millions of users to complete complex and potentially life changing interactions, such as making a lasting power of attorney, applying for a provisional driver’s licence, or applying for benefits.

This senior interaction designer role will sit within the publishing directorate of the GOV.UK programme and will be focused on helping to turn our publishing platform strategy into reality. 

This means working closely within multi disciplinary teams to reduce complexity of our publishing systems for the GOV.UK publishing platform. As a user centred design practitioner, you’ll be ensuring that our publishing systems are consistently inclusive, accessible and easy to use for our users.

You’ll also be welcomed into an active design community at GDS, whereby you will collaborate with your peers, lead designers and the head of design to help advance our approach across the GOV.UK programme and GDS organisation, helping to grow our design culture, and standardising and systemising the way we work to allow the design function to scale.

Job description

As a designer at GDS you’ll work in multidisciplinary teams, alongside researchers and developers, to deliver world-class, user centred public services that meet the Government Design Principles. You’ll help identify and fix some of the toughest problems in public infrastructure and you will be focussing on the design of services at scale. You’ll help the government transform the way it delivers services, so that they’re more efficient, simpler, faster and easier to use.

You'll be part of a fantastic design community in government, where we share ideas and challenges with 1000s of designers across the public sector. This is a chance to work on services that matter, at a huge scale, with people who value design. Find out more about what it’s like designing in government on our Design in Government blog.

As a senior interaction designer you’ll:

• design digital services that meet user needs 
• work effectively in a multidisciplinary, agile environment, adapting quickly to changes in requirements, priorities or user needs
• use research and analytics to understand users needs, identify service failures and test different designs
• design collaboratively and in the open, engaging your whole team with the design process and adapting it if necessary
• champion accessibility and inclusion, consider the impact of new technologies and ensure that designs meet legal requirements
• collaborate with designers in other teams and departments, reviewing each other's work and developing shared patterns

Person specification

We’re interested in people who:

• design clear, usable, accessible digital interfaces across multiple channels, for example for web, apps, or conversational interfaces
• senior interaction designers will have experience of guiding, supporting and mentoring others
• have experience in making effective decisions with user research data
• have experience of working with senior stakeholders and ability to negotiate important design decisions
• have experience of engaging with people in a variety of ways (eg, workshops or co-design activities)
• have an understanding of the importance of inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable public services 
• Have a working knowledge of WCAG and how it is used to develop accessible products and services
• Awareness or experience of the GOV.UK Design System
• Experience of working closely with other designers and developers to develop components and patterns that can be reused across products and services