Role Overview
We are seeking a highly skilled Service Design Manager to join an interdisciplinary design team. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of service design principles and methodologies, working to plan, visualize, and define new user and service experiences. This role requires expertise in design research, experience design, and service design to shape the systems, services, and brands that users interact with.
The Service Design Manager will work independently and collaboratively with design teams, project managers, and stakeholders to drive innovative service offerings from concept through to implementation.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Thinking
- Analyze organizational challenges and operations from a broad perspective, identifying long-term implications.
- Define how services should evolve from a human-centered, user-experience, technology, and business standpoint.
- Develop future product and service concepts that inspire customers and meet evolving needs.
- Collaborate with stakeholders to design solutions and strategic propositions based on research and insights.
- Create experience roadmaps that envision future user interactions with products and services.
- Identify opportunities to optimize resources and improve outcomes through redesigning user experiences and processes.
Design Approach
- Lead service design activities and deliverables, including ethnographic/user research, journey maps, personas, service blueprints, and prototypes.
- Conduct research to uncover customer needs and pain points using design research methodologies.
- Analyze research data to generate actionable insights and patterns of user behavior.
- Plan and coordinate creative research initiatives, including anthropological studies and UX research.
- Manage service design deliverables such as solution concepts and design artifacts.
- Design and test service-oriented pilots to address key experience and performance indicators.
Co-Creation
- Collaborate with stakeholders to create user-centric workflows, operating procedures, and strategic plans.
- Promote innovative practices aligned with industry best standards.
- Lead design thinking workshops that result in new products, services, or experiences.
- Work with business partners to assess concept value and design operational functions.
Project Delivery
- Develop persuasive project proposals supported by robust research and service design insights.
- Plan, manage, and deliver projects efficiently, engaging diverse stakeholders to launch innovative service delivery methods.
- Ensure quality execution of service design deliverables.
- Assist in developing strategies for presenting data and insights, including evaluating future trends and preparing business concepts for innovative technologies.
Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Service Design, Product Design, Interaction Design, Industrial Design, or a related discipline.
- Minimum 5+ years of professional experience in service design across multiple touchpoints.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design process and user-centered methodologies.
- Expertise in design research, design strategy, and prototyping, with readiness to expand into adjacent specialties.
- Proven ability to plan, implement, and analyze user research.
- Skilled in creating and visualizing journey maps, service ideation, and specifications.
- Proficiency in leading workshops and organizing design sprints with stakeholders.
- Advanced knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite and related design tools.
- Excellent relationship-building and stakeholder management skills.
- Strong presentation and communication abilities.
Skills & Competencies
- Strategic and analytical thinking.
- Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills.
- Ability to manage complex projects and deliver results under tight timelines.
- Creative problem-solving and innovation mindset.
