Senior Interaction Designer - UK Health Security Agency - G7
Government Digital & Data -
You will be joining the Chief Medical Advisor Directorate which provides trusted clinical and public health leadership through expert advice, guidance, epidemiological insights and evidence. The group leads and delivers services protecting the population from hazards locally, nationally and globally.
The role sits within the UKHSA’s core User-Centred Design (UCD) team, which is part of the Readiness and Surge division. Readiness and Surge works across UKHSA and sets the strategic direction for UKHSA’s readiness to respond to all threats and hazards. We focus on Agency capability, putting external stakeholder and customer needs at the centre of designs for the future. We identify opportunities to improve public health outcomes through better user experiences.
As a senior interaction designer, you’ll work as part of a multidisciplinary squad collaborating with teams across UKHSA. This role involves providing strategy, guidance and support to internal teams across UKHSA to ensure that their policies, services and products are user-centred.
As an experienced practitioner you’ll be comfortable assuring best practice. You’ll lead and mentor others within the team, including coaching stakeholders and professionals from other disciplines in service and interaction design and user-centricity.
You’ll deliver high-quality interactive prototypes across diverse projects, serving a range of user types, and will be comfortable innovating approaches to solve complex usability issues without compromising accessibility.
Together with other UCD professions, you’ll ensure quality, innovation, and creativity in how we approach all aspects of design and how we bring concepts to life for stakeholders to effect change.
You’ll be an active part of the UCD community. As a senior leader you’ll actively encourage, facilitate, and demonstrate sharing of insights and practices within the community and across the organisation.
Working for your organisation
We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality of opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce.
UKHSA ethos is to be an inclusive organisation for all our staff and stakeholders. To create, nurture and sustain an inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative solutions to meet the needs of our workforce and wider communities. We do this through celebrating and protecting differences by removing barriers and promoting equity and equality of opportunity for all.
This role is aligned to https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/role/interaction-designer#senior-interaction-designer
Job description
- Act as a recognised and credible expert in interaction design, advocating for the value of a user-centred, inclusive, and evidence-based approach to interaction design and delivery
- Provide design leadership by working collaboratively with your team, and wider project teams, to plan and deliver effective design work
- Analyse, synthesise and clearly explain complex evidence relevant to users, balancing user needs with business, operational and technical requirements
- Identify solutions to complex problems within services, and support these by developing design concepts
- Independently prototype complex ideas at an appropriate fidelity
- Clearly document and communicate design decisions, related risks and any unresolved issues
- Build relationships and work closely with stakeholders, demonstrating the value of interaction design within the organisation and beyond
- Improve design practice by using a range of design techniques and encouraging others to think of alternative ways to conduct design work, developing the practical experience of non-specialists
- Identify and create new design patterns and components, contributing to a library of assets for UKHSA designers
- Actively participate in the UCD community of practice, fostering a culture of continuous development working collaboratively to contribute to building the interaction design capability
- Line manage staff, as well as providing coaching and support to staff across UKHSA
Person specification
Essential criteria - you will be assessed on the below 9 essential criteria, which have been selected from the Job Description Document.
- Significant experience in interaction design with experience of using user-centred design methods, best practice and appropriate tooling to explore problems and opportunities within large, complex organisations
- Be able to communicate and demonstrate the importance of designing inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable services
- Significant experience of iteratively improving designs based on research and feedback
- Proven leadership skills in planning and delivering design activities, using a collaborative approach and working directly with other professions to deliver high-quality outputs
- Significant experience of various prototyping tools and methods to deliver interactive prototypes, demonstrating ability to create designs that are accessible without compromising delivery timelines
- To be able to identify and create new design patterns and components working within the standards for government services
- Experience of managing stakeholder relationships and influencing others to gain support for user-centred standards, strategies, and ways of working
- To be able to effectively communicate with developer colleagues, leveraging knowledge of front-end languages to ensure designs are developed to standard and remain accessible
- Experience of coaching and mentoring other interaction designers
Desirable criteria:
- Coding using HTML/CSS
- The GOV.UK Prototype Kit and associated hosting technologies
- Government service assessments
