Service Design KTP Associate (Fixed-term) - Edinburgh College of Art, School of Design in partnership with Citizens Advice Scotland

We wish to recruit a highly motivated, thoughtful and collaborative person with experience in service design practice to work in Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) and their Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) network in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh. The Service Design KTP Associate will employ their appetite for using design as a tool to foster learning, and desire to help others make positive change through this exciting Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project to improve the service design capacity of the CAB network in Scotland.

The CAB network is an essential community service that empowers people in every corner of Scotland through local bureaux and national services by providing free, confidential, and impartial advice available to everyone. “We look at the problems people bring to our advice services, using people's real-life experiences to influence policy, and drive positive change where it's needed most. We work for a fairer Scotland where people are empowered, and their rights respected.”

The Service Design KTP Associate will operate as a facilitator, convenor and design ambassador, whilst using design practices to foster a culture of service design thinking and continuous improvement practice across the CAS network supporting no-code development initiatives.  They will go beyond “solving problems” towards embedding learning and design knowledge within the organisation through the co-design and co-development of a bespoke CAB network manual “service design playbook” in partnership with various CABs across Scotland. 

The successful applicant will share their enthusiasm for design as a catalyst for change, to empower individuals within the CAB network to participate in local change, share their knowledge and support continuous learning cultures within a charity-based organisation who support some of our most socio-economically challenged citizens.  They will be able to highlight and celebrate their understanding of community-based empowerment, social design principles involving inclusion and participation, as well as their passion for fostering and teaching others to implement positive change, through design.

The Opportunity:

The Service Design KTP Associate will operate within CAS, under supervision and support from the academic leads at the University of Edinburgh and the Perth CAB CEO. This KTP project is based in Scotland, with the core project team working on hybrid model between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. There will be the opportunity to work with a range of Citizen’s Advice Bureaux across the Scottish network and site visits are expected (with travel stipends included). The project will introduce the KTP associate to a range of industry partners already involved with CAS and CAB projects, with expertise in service design and no-code development. 

Your skills and attributes for success:

• You have a strong graduate qualification in a relevant design discipline, which demonstrates your strong ability to engage in multi-media approaches to service design.  Candidates with backgrounds in Service Design, Product Design and/or Graphic Design,
• You have experience in design research methods (design ethnography, community engagement, workshop development), demonstrating your ability to work with others using principles of co-design, co-creation and/or participatory design
• You will have strong capacity in using appropriate design tools and graphics software, in order to generate appropriate visual materials for communication, dissemination and graphic production.  This may include Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, or their equivalent
• You will have strong verbal presentation skills, and also strong writing skills, able to generate relevant reports, articles and outputs that are disseminate to others, whether with project stakeholders, internally with the project team, or with wider audiences including academic conferences.
• You will have strong project management skills, and an ability to work independently to challenging timelines.
• You will have experience with No-Code development practices, and this may include a working understanding of associated coding platforms, including (but not limited to) HTML, CSS, and/or Javascript.

As a valued member of our team you can expect:

An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. We give you support, nurture your talent and reward success. You will benefit from a competitive reward package and a wide range of staff benefits, which includes a generous holiday entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, staff discounts, family-friendly initiatives, flexible working and much more. Click to access our staff benefits page (opens new browser tab) for further information and use our reward calculator to find out the total value of pay and benefits provided.

As a KTP Associate,  you will be of the national Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (ktp-uk.org) scheme, and entitled to specialist management training and a £4000 personal budget for development training.
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.