Strategic Design Jobs in Connecticut (NOW HIRING)

Digital Service Design Manager
Hartford, CT/Hybrid
12 Months Contract
This is Us
The State of Connecticut is embarking upon a digital transformation to uplift the lives and well-being of our residents and employees. Our goal is to improve access to our programs and services, making interaction with government easier. When you join the Connecticut Digital Service, you'll be part of a team creating simple experiences personalized for everyone. If you enjoy solving complex problems with a curious, supportive, high-performing team, then the State of Connecticut is the place for you.
Is This You?
Big Picture Thinking. You strive to improve internal processes and externally facing solutions.
User-centric. You derive joy from working with people to drive user-centered research and testing.
Service-Oriented. You are passionate about government innovation and improving services for citizens.
About the Role
We believe service access is a social justice issue and people closest to service challenges should inform service improvement efforts. As a result, we're looking for candidates who are passionate about evidence-based decision-making, dedicated to ethical and inclusive design, effective communicators, thrive while collaborating, and committed to the in-depth work required to drive lasting change within a large organization and complex service environment.
As the Service Design Manager, you'll report to the DAS-BITS Deputy Director of Digital Product and lead service design projects from project scoping to research, design strategy, and implementation. You'll collaborate with team members to transform the digital team's work into a rigorous and sustainable practice at the State of Connecticut.
As a senior member of the team, you're responsible for leading and implementing all aspects of a project life cycle-including strategy, design, implementation, and evaluation. In addition, you'll mentor emerging team members by helping to expand their skill sets and deliver exceptional work. Lastly, you'll amplify the Digital Service's service design approach, progress project work, and help build the State of Connecticut's service design practice.
An ideal candidate should be a talented and knowledgeable designer with fresh, creative ideas, and an excellent eye for detail. In addition to understanding user experience design and development methodologies, the candidate should also have experience working in an Agile environment. You should not be afraid to lead by example, knowing when and where you should own the outcome yourself or let others carry the torch.
Primary Duties
Strategizing
• Design and facilitate thoughtful and ethical research (in collaboration with the team's User Research Manager) to understand the service-related needs of residents, staff, leaders, and other stakeholders.
• Synthesize research into insights and well-defined opportunity areas for intervention. Help translate these into actionable steps while communicating with people who are often unfamiliar to design and research methods.
• Develop feasible, person-centered, and comprehensive service strategies that improve resident interactions with government and staff work experiences.
• Design service solutions that work across channels of experience-including digital and non-digital touchpoints (e.g., in-person interactions and physical service environments).
Practice Building
• Build the State's Service Design team through hiring, growing, and retaining high-performing teammates.
• Drive a practice in mixed methods research (qualitative and quantitative) including when and how to apply methods throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Set standards of practice for and with service design team members.
• Expand team members' skill sets through regular feedback, learning sessions, and one-on-one mentorship.
• Design and facilitate skill-shares with State colleagues, so they can apply strategic design methods to their work.
Communicating
• Use iterative processes to ensure project deliverables; like service blueprints, process flows, stakeholder maps, and project reports, are rigorously executed.
• Choose the right deliverable for the right kind of conversation.
• Visually communicate ideas, research synthesis, and prototypes, so stakeholders can align on concepts. Knowledge and familiarity with tools such as MIRO and Figma will help move ideas from conversations to prototypes for feedback.
• Develop compelling narratives that communicate the human experience to decision-makers, so they can make clear decisions that align with evidence and human need.
Implementing
• Work with UX designers, visual designers, content strategists, architects, and technologists to develop and build tools and resources (e.g., websites, apps, one-pagers, applications, the design of space, etc.) supportive of service improvement strategies.
• Facilitate listening and research sessions with subject matter experts.
• Create change management, governance, and pilot plans setting implementation efforts up for success, acknowledging the constraints and realities of the service system.
• Facilitate feature and product roadmaps to take stakeholders from current state, through MVP, then to the idealized future state in iterative steps to meet resource and stakeholder needs.
• Synthesize complex information from various sources into clear, actionable insights.
• Develop metrics of success to measure the effectiveness of project outcomes.
• Evaluate pilot plans to understand what works and doesn't about a solution.
• Take appropriate action to revise service solutions based on learnings from evaluation.
Collaborating
• Communicate work without jargon or pretense.
• Ensure participatory design processes include the right people, at the right points in time.
• Offer and take constructive feedback.
• Respect and protect team members and stakeholders' time.
• Communicate with clarity and honesty around the status of work.
• Cultivate and maintain respectful relationships with project stakeholders.
Advocating
• In partnership with the CTDS product team and agency communications staff, disseminate lessons learned, tools, and best practices of the CTDS to the public.
• Actively contribute to the field of service design through journal submissions, conference participation, and community skill-shares.
Project Managing
• Collaborate with senior leadership on the design of a project, key outcomes, and methods.
• Break down complex projects into reasonable project plans with clear deliverables, milestones, and deadlines.
• Lead project partners and team members through service design processes.
• Clearly communicate project plans and their status to leadership, team members, and other stakeholders.
• Effectively navigate through ambiguity and project challenges.
• Deliver projects on time.
Preferred Skills & Qualifications
Other Desirable Qualifications
• A design-related degree or relevant industry experience
• 5+ years of professional experience or a graduate degree plus 3+ years of professional experience
• 5+ years managing project relationships with colleagues, clients, and project stakeholders
Nice-to-Have Skills
• Bilingual
• Strong visual design aesthetic
• Experience with community-based and participatory design
• Experience working in the social impact space on complex service challenges
• Experience with process improvement methodologies (LEAN, six-sigma, etc.)
• Experience with human-centered change management
Administrative Considerations
The Service Design Manager will work as part of an iterative team using agile sprints. Tasks may be adjusted, reduced, or expanded as the project work progresses through various phases. The contract employee shall be expected to maintain and provide written documentation on any work performed in conjunction with this engagement.
The engagement will be for a term of up to 12 months. All work will be performed within a forty (40) hour work week Monday to Friday, generally in eight (8) hour shifts, excluding State holidays. Payment will be on a time and material basis and paid only for hours worked. State Agencies are in downtown Hartford and the Greater Hartford area. Local travel reimbursement is not provided.
Security/Privacy Considerations: Information accessible by the contractor may be sensitive, confidential, or subject to the Privacy Act and/or HIPAA considerations. Contractor personnel must be familiar with and comply with the provisions of appropriate regulations and/or instructions. Signing of a confidentiality agreement will be required. Daily sign-in to the facility may be required. The contractor employee must always display an access badge while present in state facilities. A background check will be required.