Service and Interaction Design Lead
Job summary
The Service and Interaction Design Lead plays a pivotal role within the User-Centred Design team in the Digital Directorate. This is a senior, expert practitioner position, responsible for providing professional leadership and ensuring that the most effective service and interaction design decisions are made to meet the needs of service users.
In this role, you will lead and develop the organisation's design community, demonstrating a wide range of leadership and management skills, and fostering a supportive, collaborative environment to help shape the HRA's journey in delivering high-quality digital services for the research community. Working closely with the Head of User-Centred Design and product teams, you will contribute to strategic planning through service design, ensuring that all work is grounded in a user-centred, evidence-based approach to design and delivery.
You will also play a key role in assessing the impact of emerging technologies, ensuring that design solutions comply with legal requirements, accessibility standards, and government guidelines. Your responsibilities will include applying core service design techniques such as blueprinting, prototyping, user journey mapping, and storyboarding to create intuitive and effective services.
In addition, you will champion and clearly communicate the importance of inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable public services across the organisation.
Main duties of the job
The service and interaction design lead will:
- Demonstrate excellent communication skills, influencing across multiple groups of people including suppliers, external partners, and senior internal stakeholders, you will form a deep understanding of user and organisational needs.
- Lead internal and external activities within the design specialism to develop and convey complex concepts.
- Engage with stakeholders to facilitate and foster collaborative approaches to prioritising service and interaction design requirements of users and partners.
- Lead a proactive approach to our alignment with the Government Service Standard and work with user centred design colleagues to constantly improve the design of our services.
- Work collaboratively with the Head of User Centred Design and the product team to guide both design and organisational strategy and priorities.
- Using expert knowledge and previous experience to advise on design standards, methods, tools and applications, so that optimum approaches and solutions are delivered to meet user needs, organisational objectives and policy intent.
- Analyse and interpret functional and non-functional design requirements to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from a digital perspective
About us
At the HRA, we are committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive working environment where we actively invest in the development and empowerment of our staff, enabling them to perform at their best. We strive to promote a healthy workplace culture where wellbeing, collaboration, and professional growth are valued and encouraged.
Working at the HRA, we support flexible working, recognising that home based or hybrid arrangements provides us with the most productive environment to work well. Where possible, we'll offer a working pattern that suits you.
The HRA offers home based contracts for all locations. Newcastle, Manchester and Nottingham based staff can be office based and hybrid working arrangements are also possible. We encourage you to speak with us to explore how this could be accommodated.
We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know from experience that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger, more creative workplace that helps us to deliver the best services. We welcome applications which represent the rich diversity of our community: age, disability, gender identity and expression, ethnicity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and other diverse characteristics, and we have policies in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification documents for full details about this role.
When completing your application, ensure you clearly demonstrate how your experience and skills align with the criteria outlined for this position.
We recognise that generative AI tools can be helpful in supporting applicants during the recruitment process, particularly for tasks such as proofreading, structuring, or refining written responses. However, we encourage candidates to use AI responsibly and sparingly. Applications should reflect your authentic voice, personal experiences, and genuine qualifications. Over reliance on AI-generated content can result in generic or inaccurate submissions that fail to meet the criteria or convey your individuality. Misrepresentation of skills, knowledge, or experience, including through AI-generated content, may lead to the rejection of your application, withdrawal of your offer, or your dismissal if you do start with us. If you choose to use AI, please ensure it enhances rather than replaces your own input, and be transparent about its use where appropriate. False and insincere examples go against our values of integrity and transparency.
Important information
We are unable to offer employment under any sponsorship arrangement as we do not hold a sponsorship licence. Applications requiring sponsorship will not be considered.
Applications that do not clearly demonstrate how the essential criteria outlined in the person specification are met will not be shortlisted.
Only the information provided in the application form will be considered. CVs will not be reviewed.
We do not accept applications via recruitment agencies or other third parties.
The HRA reserves the right to close this vacancy early should it receive a sufficient number of applications.
Our fixed term roles are also open to applicants who wish to apply on a secondment basis. Applicants who fit this category are advised to speak with their line manager before applying and visit their organisations Secondments Policy.
Organisational structure and directorate overview
The HRA is made up of five directorates: Approvals, Chief Executive, Digital, Policy and Partnerships and Resources.
This role sits within HRA Digital. The digital directorate is responsible for developing, delivering and supporting complex solutions within the HRAs portfolio of UK-wide information systems for health and care research. This includes a major programme to build new systems, and to achieve the successful migration and eventual closure of current systems. The directorate owns, develops, and delivers the HRAs digital strategy in line with government digital and functional standards.
The HRA Digital team is a collaborative, supportive team consisting of HRA employees, secondees, contractors and vendors.
Person Specification
Qualifications
- Master's Degree or post-graduate qualification in a relevant area or significant relevant experience in service and interaction design
- Ongoing continuous professional development
Knowledge, Skills and Expertise:
- In depth specialist knowledge and significant experience of developing service designs based on evidence of user needs and organisational outcome.
- Expert interaction design practitioner with experience of influencing and mentoring others
- Set direction and assure best practice by determining and documenting design standards and policies.
- Thorough knowledge of user centred design and product development process.
Experience
- Onboarding of new staff within a user centred design team or professional community
- Identifying design needs, creating new design patterns and components where needed and ensuring they are captured and implemented as part of a project and across the government design system.
- Experience of successfully leading a design team through GDS/CDDO or NHS Service Standard assessments
- Past experience working in government or an NHS Organisation
Analytical and Judgemental Skills:
- Able to have an overall perspective on business issues and activities, understand their wider implications and long-term impact
- Evaluate design proposals from external suppliers, and make recommendations to senior stakeholders
- Working across multiple services and leading groups of UCD professionals to set direction, assuring the quality of service and interaction design
- Interpreting strategy and translate emerging trends and technologies which might impact or benefit the organisation
Interpersonal Skills:
- Engaging and building relationships with a range of stakeholders to support delivery of user and business needs
Knowledge, Skills and Expertise
- Confident in providing advice and guidance across projects on service design and interaction design to influence others, in line with the Government Service Standard.
- Knowledge and expertise in blue-printing, prototyping, user journey flows and story boarding techniques, including giving direction on tools and methods to use
Experience
- Designing clear, usable, accessible digital interfaces that are inclusive and work across a range of devices
- Demonstrable experience of managing service and interaction design as a lead or as part of a user centred design team to iterate design processes
- Work effectively in a multidisciplinary, agile environment, adapting quickly to changes in requirements, priorities or user needs
Interpersonal Skills
- Coaching and leading teams in user centred design principles
- Influence and manage in a complex matrix department
Other
- Champion accessibility and inclusion, consider the impact of new technologies and ensure that designs meet legal requirements
Knowledge, Skills and Expertise
- Significant experience in combining user research and analytics to problem solve through design iterations to improve user experience.
- Understand and communicate the importance of inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable public services
Analytical and Judgemental Skills
- Multi-tasking, analysing opportunities, defining successful approaches, and proactively solve problems
Interpersonal Skills
- Supporting the design team to maintain a focus on delivery whilst instilling the importance of professional development and continual learning
- Facilitating conflict resolution within teams or professions
Employer details
Employer name
Health Research Authority
Address
Manchester Office
3 Piccadilly Place, London Road, Manchester
Manchester
M1 3BN
United Kingdom
Employer's website
https://www.hra.nhs.uk/