Designer (A Sustainable Future)

We are recruiting for a Designer within our Sustainable Future mission.

The role involves looking for someone with design craft skills (e.g. digital, product, industrial design) who’s looking to apply that expertise to social innovation. This role might suit someone with design agency experience looking to move into social impact and design-for-policy work, ideally with some experience relating to energy and/or sustainability.

Nesta’s design team has a broad range of experience and different backgrounds, including design of services, behavioural interventions, digital technology, physical products, architecture, brand, graphics and many more. What we have in common is a focus on designing for social impact and for the benefit of people and the planet.

In this role, you will be part of a team of around thirty people who work full-time on the Sustainable Future mission, including researchers, behavioural scientists, data scientists and policy specialists. You’ll also interact with other methods experts from across Nesta, the Behavioural Insights Team, and partner organisations, who work on mission projects on a more ad-hoc basis. You will work with the mission Design Lead and one other designer, and will be part of a growing community of designers across Nesta’s wider Design and Technology practice.

This role is for someone who has worked on projects that have met user needs, contributed to briefs and been part of interdisciplinary teams delivering solutions through an applied design process. Designers in the mission work on a range of different projects, meaning your tasks will vary day to day.

The successful candidate will regularly:

• Lead elements of research and testing with end users
• Create physical and digital prototypes at different levels of fidelity
• Collaborate with non-designers from inside and outside of Nesta
• Clearly communicate what their work means for project outcomes and make recommendations on the direction of mission programmes

Responsibilities include:

• Plan, undertake and support user research
• Design, develop and test potential solutions with end users, supporting projects to do so
• Facilitate individual workshops to bring people together
• Produce design iterations from low-fidelity sketches to functional prototypes
• Support the end-to-end design of interventions often involving multiple channels, touchpoints and partners
• Ensure Nesta and our partners balance the needs of end users with business and social objectives
• Work within a multidisciplinary team to design, prototype and test innovative solutions
• Actively participate in collaboration, including co-design or multidisciplinary working
• Role model design-led approaches within the mission and across Nesta and contribute to improving Nesta’s approach to design by being part of our design and product community
• Help identify and scope ideas for new work
• Take responsibility for managing your own contribution to projects
• Quickly get to grips with new areas, topics and contexts relevant to your work, and build your subject knowledge

Required experience includes:

• Experience in a design discipline, such as service design, user experience design, product design, etc.
• Experience working on multiple design projects that have met the needs of end users and stakeholders
• Ideally, contributing to the end-to-end journey of a service that involves multiple channels and touchpoints
• Experience in undertaking a range of activities from client engagement to user research, prototyping and testing
• Experience of working with non-designers in a design process
• User research: Ability to conduct and plan for interviews, observations, ethnographic/immersive research and other research methods
• Evidence and context-based design: Ability to work with others to use evidence (qualitative and quantitative) to inform the design of projects, products, and services
• Prototyping: Experience in prototyping and user testing, and know how to choose the most appropriate ones
• Communication skills: Ability to listen to the needs of users, stakeholders and partners and interpret them clearly
• Highlighting risks: Ability to identify key risks with a design and strategies, and adapt to them
• Community collaboration: Ability to work collaboratively within a group, actively networking with others

Desirable experience includes:

• Experience of applying agile, lean and design thinking principles
• Experience of creating functional prototypes
• Experience of designing interventions with a social purpose
• Experience of applying behavioural science principles to design
• Experience of designing interventions relevant to our Sustainable Future innovation mission
• Experience working within and/or knowledge of the energy sector

What we offer:

• Salary: circa £37,400 plus an array of benefits
• Location: This role is based in Blackfriars, Central London, hybrid working arrangement
• Term: Permanent
• Hours: 37.5