Snook are on a mission to design a world that works better for people. 

We design sustainable and fair services with people’s real needs at their heart. We do this by engaging with users, building digital products, training our clients, and much more.

Snook started as a service design company in Scotland in 2009. We have now become a multidisciplinary team of almost 100 people, based in Glasgow and London. We’ve worked with brilliant clients across the public, private and third sectors. Clients have included Cancer Research UK and Tesco to Hackney City Council and the Scottish Government.

Next Era Government

One of Snook’s core missions is ‘Next Era Government’. We want to make sure that human needs are at the centre of government services’ design and delivery. We are the User-Centred Design partner for multiple government agencies, including Home Office, Department for Education, and the NHS.

Key Details

• Location: UK-Based – (this is a UK home based role, although you may be required to attend meetings at client offices or Snook/NEC sites once in a while) 

• Contract: Permanent

• Salary: UK £46,000 – £59,800 with a London weighting of £50,000 – £65,000

• Deadline: Sunday 28th November 2021 at 12am

• Additional requirements: Right to work in the UK

• This role requires our staff to go through the government’s Security Clearance process. In order to be eligible for this, applicants will need to have been a continuous resident in the UK for the past 5 years.

As an Interaction Designer at Snook, you will be responsible for helping to design the best ways in which users can interact with services. Whilst the core of our work is designing intuitive, inclusive and accessible interfaces, our designers understand that often the most important part of this is communicating and collaborating with others.

You’ll be embedded in a team alongside other user-centred disciplines such as service designers, user researchers and content designers. Given the large scale of the projects we work on, you’ll also have the opportunity to work closely with other disciplines such as analysts, software engineering teams and policy experts too. 

As an agency, we work with a broad range of clients and not everyone has experience of user-centred design. You’ll play a key role in championing the importance of this approach by working in the open and frequently sharing the thinking and evidence behind your work.

We strive to ensure that human needs are at the centre of government services’ design and delivery. We are the User-Centred Design partner for multiple government agencies, including Home Office, Department for Education, NHS Digital and NHSX. Recent projects our Interaction Designers have worked on include;

• Working with the Department of Education to launch a BETA service that provides training to early career teachers, to better prepare them better for the job and help address the falling retention rate in the profession

• Working with Camden Council to design a tool that supports people with disabilities and mobility concerns when travelling around the borough

• Working with the Home Office, to use research and evidence to  improve the design of critical internal case working systems that help to keep our country safe

Working in these sectors will give you valuable experience of applying Government Service Standards and preparing for Government Service Assessments. We also work with local government and third and private sector organisations too. 

This role provides the opportunity to work across these sectors while receiving knowledge and support from other Snooks. When possible, we rotate people from one sector to another after 3 to 12 months (depending on the project), enabling people to develop in-depth knowledge of a variety of sectors.

You’ll be part of a growing team, working alongside 7 other like-minded and highly skilled Interaction Designers. Whilst we may not all be working on the same projects, we host weekly remote meetups where we share our work, discuss its wider implications and provide support to one another. We mix with the other disciplines in the Digital team too, meaning you’ll have access to Accessibility specialists, Developers and Content Designers to help broaden your skills. You’ll have no trouble finding someone to help you navigate a new situation, receive constructive feedback on some work or most importantly provide enthusiastic advice on where to get lunch if you’ve decided to work from one of our studios.

All of our Interaction Designers are assigned a coach. Your coach will look after your wellbeing, help you set goals and objectives and provide feedback to help you grow.

You should be able to demonstrate that you have experience in all of the following:

• Interaction / UX Design: you are a highly experienced practitioner with a proven track record of delivering interaction design work in varied environments. You understand how people interact with technology, the different ways they access it and why and when to use common design patterns.

• User-centred / evidence based design: you’ve designed new or iterated existing products based on quantitative and qualitative evidence. For example, you’ve used research from interviews with users, or data from analytics platforms to inform and continually make improvements to your designs.

• Agile practices: you are confident leading projects that follow Agile or Lean methodologies. You understand their limitations and how to bring flexibility to them when needed.

• Technology: You have a nuanced understanding of how the internet works and the technology constraints we need to consider when designing digital products.

• Front end development: you know how to use front-end programming languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make basic prototypes or websites.

• Accessibility: you’re familiar with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines and can design to meet AA standards.

• Research and analysis: you’ve helped with the running and analysis of usability tests (e.g heuristic evaluations and A/B testing), and perhaps used analytics to pull together some insights too.

• Industry standard software; you know your way around design packages such as Figma, Sketch and Miro, and understand their limitations.

• Project leadership and communication: you have experience leading the design phase of a variety of projects which vary in scale and complexity. You understand how to operate under constraints, and manage clients and stakeholders.

• Workshops: you’ve designed and facilitated workshops with team members, clients or other stakeholders.

• Self managing: you’re able to manage your own time and budget on both client and internal projects, and understand how to prioritise tasks. You are able to understand the needs of projects that are less defined or without leadership and can help guide others in this area too.

• Presenting your work: you’re comfortable in presenting your design work and explaining the rationale behind it.

If you’re unsure how your experience lines up, please drop any questions over to [email protected]. We’re a friendly bunch and here to help.

Desirable skills and experience

If you have any or all of the following too, we’d love to hear from you.

• Coaching: You have experience coaching others in the discipline and know how to support their growth.

• Public sector: you’ve worked on projects for central or local government, either on their back office platforms, or public facing services

• Design communities: you’ve helped to set up or run regular sessions that encourage other designs to share processes, learnings and final work.

• Generous holidays giving you 29.5 days holiday (including bank holidays), 4 of which are fixed to be taken at Christmas. Plus there are up to an additional 6 discretionary days for Christmas Closure

• A supportive maternity package

• Flexible working hours through discussion to support family friendly working and other commitments you may have

• A bike to work scheme

• A vibrant and supportive online and studio culture

• Access to Snook social clubs, and opportunity to run your own

• Membership to Headspace, the meditation app

• Annual team away-day and quarterly show and tells where we come together as a company, taking time out to learn, reflect, and eat snacks

• Weekly learning sessions plus an annual training budget

• Snook group pension plan

• We support you with a Snook buddy when you join to get you started

How to apply 

This is a rolling recruitment, please do not delay your application as we are sifting and interviewing daily. The vacancy will be closed when available positions are filled.

We ask you to submit a:

CV

A cover letter that tells us about you, why you want to work at Snook, what sort of design problems you’d be interested in tackling with us and what your notice period is

Portfolio of your work highlighting key projects

If you do not have a portfolio, we have created a simple template that you can use.

If you have any questions please get in touch at [email protected]

Remote interviews

Due to the current Covid-19 situation, all interviews will be conducted remotely. We will offer interviews at times that suit you, so if you have children, caring duties or other circumstances affecting your availability, we’re happy to offer convenient times outside of work hours.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion 

We strive for diversity in our team. If we’re going to design services for the public we need to ensure our team is inclusive. Snook encourages applications from all backgrounds, abilities or impairments, communities and industries. We’re committed to having a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences and abilities.