Senior Interaction Designer

Job summary

We’re looking for a Senior Interaction Designer who wants to make a lasting impact on how the Home Office delivers user-centred products and services.

You’ll work in an agile, multi-disciplinary team on some of the most exciting and impactful services that government delivers for the public, as well as internal systems for more than 35,000 staff across the department.

Some of the projects you could work on include:

• building systems for prison and law enforcement staff to search for and identify high risk persons quickly and efficiently;
• continuously improving some of our live law enforcement products using data, analytics and user research to inform your designs;
• designing our ongoing work to digitise the entire visa application process and integrating a series of separate products into a more cohesive user experience;
• creating user-centred asylum application systems to make applying simpler for applicants.

You can learn more about design and research in the Home Office on our blog:

• Establishing the Home Office User Research Ethics Board
• Using ‘cooperative usability testing’ with our expert users
• Psychological safety for researchers
• How inclusive services help us to deliver effectively

Job description

As a Senior Interaction Designer you’ll design the flow of user interactions over a service as well as the right components and layout.

You will mentor and train other designers, supporting the growth and development of the interaction design team.

You will have an understanding of the way the internet works, experience of designing in an agile environment and want to help government transform the way it delivers services.

We’re looking for people who are collaborative, inclusive, open to their work being critiqued and who are empathetic towards their colleagues and users. A healthy balance of determinism and pragmatism will be needed on our complex services and products.

 If you want to join us in keeping the UK safe and secure and ensuring that our services for migrants and asylum seekers are easier and simpler to use, apply now.

Person specification

Responsibilities

Your main day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• Creates concepts and interactive prototypes to communicate and test ideas with users and stakeholders; 
• Facilitates the design process on your team and with stakeholders by running workshops, actively seeking feedback, mapping processes and visualising design problems;
• Develops an understanding of users’ needs, as well as the organisations requirements, to design simple, effective and accessible services;
• Designs services consistent with Home Office and cross Government standards, leading on best practice;
• Line manages, support and mentor less experienced Interaction Designers, allocating tasks and providing them with guidance, training and constructive feedback;
• Helps drive our mission to make the department user-centred by advocating for our methods and being an active voice in the user-centred design community, sharing your knowledge and experience.

Essential Skills

You’ll have a demonstrable passion for user-centred design, with the following skills or some experience in:

• Visual and interaction design to create usable, accessible and responsive user interfaces
• Communicating ideas through sketching, concept creation and designing prototypes at different levels of fidelity
• Coding HTML and CSS for the purposes of creating interactive prototypes
• User-centred methodology including understanding user needs, taking part in research activities and interpreting user research to inform design
• Working and collaborating in an agile team, using test and learn methods to iterate designs
• Facilitating the design process on a team, by running workshops and inviting collaboration with other professions
• Advocating for user-centred design to a range of audiences, including senior stakeholder, and talking about your ideas in a way that other people understand
• Line managing, supporting and mentoring Interaction Designers, allocating tasks and providing them with guidance, training and constructive feedback
• Accessibility needs and assistive technology

Desirable Skills

Ideally, you will also have the following skills or some experience in:

• Understanding how the internet works and the technology constraints that may need to be considered in design 

Our skills align with the cross gov DDaT Capability Framework -Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Candidates reaching the required standard and attending the final interview, will be assessed using technical and experience-based questions. Technical level definitions can be found via www.gov.uk/guidance/interaction-designer

Technical skills

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

• User focus. (Skill level: expert)
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Prototyping. (Skill level: expert)