Design Jobs Board

Are you able to train up some of the world’s leading companies and innovators on how to use design thinking for innovation? You’ll be designing and running courses, workshops and leading innovation projects both online and in the UK and internationally. You’ll be working on socially relevant and commercially important projects helping clients bring services to market across multiple sectors. As we are a growing business, this maternity cover may lead to a permanent new role.

DK&A AND THE DESIGN THINKERS ACADEMY LONDON

DK&A and the Design Thinkers Academy London is a design consultancy and training company combined. We train teams and support companies to innovate. We enable our clients to generate fresh ideas and turn these into new products and services around the needs of users. We believe in the practical power of design to make a positive difference and we see ourselves as change agents.

Our clients come from a broad range of sectors including transport, luxury, retail, digital, fintech and health. The skills and services we provide them with range from research, ethnography, service design, experience design, information design, sustainable design and strategic design to design management.

OUR TEAM AND OUR STRUCTURE

Our studio has grown quickly since we started up in 2014 with a few of us on laptops round a kitchen table. There are now 12 of us on the payroll and more than 40 Associates. Our Associates are mostly leading design experts who either help us deliver consultancy projects or who teach with us as part of our Design Thinkers Academy Faculty.

The key to our future is our team. Our ambition is to create a platform for our current and future talent to thrive and grow with the business. Our structure is flat. We work as a lean matrix team based around projects and skills.

THE ROLE

This is a full-time role for 6 months from 2nd November 2020 – 30th April 2021. You will be providing maternity cover for our existing Learning Designer and report to our Head of Design. The potential also exists for this to to become a permanent role, working with our existing Learning Designer when they return to work. We are looking for someone with a background in design education who would be confident in co-creating and leading innovation and Design Thinking projects, content and courses incl. the delivery of our face to face and online training programme. The role has responsibility for knowledge management and ongoing development of our training, innovation and co-creation workshops. While including practical elements such as timetabling and programming for all our workshops, it would suit someone who is an active practicioner of Design Thinking, who would enjoy keeping up with current research in this area. When delivering training courses some early mornings, late evenings and occasional weekend work will be required.

KEY TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Programme development

• This role reports to the Head of Design. You will work together with them, the MD and other sector heads to tailor innovation and Design Thinking projects and workshops to the needs of clients. This includes co-ordinating internally with colleagues and externally with clients and their account leads, to develop content plans for bespoke training
• Working with the Head of Design to provide content, programming and co-ordination for the Design Thinkers Academy’s face to face and online open courses
• Contributing to the development of the Design Thinkers Academy London in faculty sessions, project de-briefs, in-house strategy sessions and away-days

Programme delivery

• Take responsibility for devising Bootcamp challenges that are socially useful, helpful to the NGO sponsor and effective for Design Thinkers Academy training purposes
• Take responsibility for sourcing and booking appropriate respondents/end users for workshops, prototype testing and courses both directly and through specialist suppliers
• Researching and expanding our list of respondent suppliers
• Create training schedules, clearly setting out modules and exercises and determining roles and timings for the whole team
• Co-facilitating courses and workshops, both face to face and online. We can support you developing your own skills as a co-facilitator on our courses and workshops. This will include running exercises or a module and providing co-ordination between the production team and the lead coach

Knowledge management

• Maintaining and evolving toolkits and handouts, both as digital and print publications. These need to be course specific but easily tailored for bespoke clients and clear enough to work as a stand alone guide for delegates
• Taking responsibility for maintaining and updating the toolkit and handout library so that it is easy to use and accessible to all your colleagues and fit for purpose
• Maintaining and evolving slide decks to support coaches and delegates, using on brand graphics that link with schedules, modules, exercises and tools
• Supporting the development of materials for new courses, or client co-creation sessions, such as Mural / Miro templates, supporting decks, etc.

General

• When your activities involve spending, you are expeted to support the budget holders to carry out activities in a cost effective way. When responsible for your own budget, keep accurate records and forecast spending to identify cost efficiencies
• Ensure you use time effectively to keep the business lean and agile and maintain accurate weekly time-sheets to support company invoicing
• Utilise your skills as a designer to contribute to ongoing business improvments eg. improving the course experience for our delegates and customer

ATTRIBUTES AND EXPERIENCE

We are a looking for someone who thrives in a busy environment and is comfortable co-creating with a variety of stakeholders. We are a supportive and friendly office but a reasonable level of adaptablity and self reliance is important for all members of the team. An interest in the academic and practical side of Design Thinking and knowledge of digital and online studying and collaboration is essential.

You will need to be comfortable with occasional international travel to help colleagues deliver client workshops overseas.

In return you will get to work on interesting creative projects with a team of experts. Although the pace is sometimes fast and furious you will be in a good position to ‘learn by doing’ from those around you and from exposure to the Design Thinking courses we offer via our Design Thinkers Academy.

Specific areas of experience:

Essential

• A Degree or equivalent in design thinking, information design, service design, experience design, interaction design, sustainable design, innovation design or similar related studies
• Experience in the application of Design Thinking on client or innovation projects
• Experience of co-creation with end-users, innovation workshops and prototyping
• Excellent written skills and the ability to create clear, concise, well-structured reports or handouts in a reasonable time frame
• Excellent verbal communication skills and the confidence to contribute to meetings and workshops
• Good online and face to face coaching and facilitation skills. For online course delivery you will need to be proficient with facilitating in Mural or Miro
• Ability to deliver projects on time and within budget
• Experience in using Adobe Creative Suite to design pitches, proposals and reports in accordance with our company brands
• Good knowledge of KeyNote to create and adapt existing slide decks
  Proficient English language skills

On the above we would expect evidence of at least 5 years of experience

Desirable

• An MA in a design discipline
• A sample of written academic output such as a thesis or dissertation or extended essay
• Experience of running a ‘methods bank’ or knowledge management

REMUNERATION AND BENEFITS

• This is a full time role with an annual salary of circa £40K pro-rated, depending on experience. Benefits include the following:
• We have flexible working. So long as employees are present for core hours from 9am – 4pm they can choose how to organise their 37.5 hour week
• We have a contributory pension scheme. DK&A contribute 4% to match employee contributions of 4%. The scheme is recommended but not compulsory. You can opt out if you have already made other pension arrangements of your own.
• We shut the office between Christmas and the New Year. This is additional holiday on top of the standard 25 days annual leave, pro-rated.
• We can also arrange for employees to attend as delegates on our own open courses at the Design Thinkers Academy, at no cost, where relevant to their role.
• We recently added healthcare, life assurance and income protection to our benefits package
• We help with loans for cycle and travel season tickets to work

LOCATION

This role is based at our studio in Wandsworth, SW18 with occasional overseas travel for brief periods of a few days. We have an attractive, light studio with good facilities including a shower, bike parking and high-quality shared meeting and kitchen facilities. As an employee we will provide you with a laptop or desktop computer.

HOW TO APPLY

Please send your application, including a covering letter clearly explaining why you are suited to the role, CV and portfolio by 9th October 2020. Selection will be based on the covering letter, portfolio and CV. You must hold the right to work in the UK. DK&A will not provide any visas needed.