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| # SFIA Role Guidance: UCD Principal | |
| - [SFIA Level 6](https://sfia-online.org/en/legacy-sfia/sfia-7/responsibilities/level-6) | |
| - [Job description](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/main/roles/sfia%20(legacy)/ucd_principal.md) | |
| ## Summary of role | |
| Our User-Centred Design (UCD) Principals enable public sector organisations to better design services in order to improve society. They do this by building and managing strategic relationships, leading accounts, finding new opportunities, creating space for teams to do good work and advising as a senior design leader. | |
| They might have built their leadership skills as a designer, user researcher, content designer or design manager. | |
| ## Required competency for the role | |
| ### Autonomy | |
| Has ultimate authority and is responsible for the productivity and quality of design and user research on selected client accounts, consisting of multiple teams. Establishes organisational objectives with client and account team. Assigns broad responsibilities and direction to UCD Leads and Seniors within teams. | |
| #### Examples of behaviour and responsibilities | |
| _Below are examples of behaviours and responsibilities a person in this role might be expected to demonstrate. The list is provided for illustrative purposes only._ | |
| - Make changes within a team when the quality of work is not of a high standard | |
| - Acknowledges with the client when design work is not progressing and makes a plan for how to quickly improve the speed of delivery | |
| - Takes responsibility for addressing any issues that are blocking their teams from delivering a good service. | |
| - Sets the unifying design vision for their different teams to work towards | |
| - Works with client to define the direction for a team as it's being assembled | |
| - Assigns line managers to new people informed by people learning objectives. | |
| - Works within an account team to plan, grow, and improve the outcomes teams are delivering and ways of working | |
| - Accountable for the growth and promotion of people they direct and indirectly line manage. | |
| - Meeting targets for team growth across multiple offices. | |
| - Owning the bidding of new work with a big emphasis on user-centred design. | |
| --- | |
| ### Influence | |
| * Drives team towards design excellence by influencing teams, stakeholders and partners. | |
| * Influences policy and strategy formation through building relationships and communicating vision. | |
| * Initiates influential relationships with most senior client stakeholders and peers within an account team. | |
| * Persuades peers and stakeholders to focus on the right user needs, outcomes and team working conditions to design a good service. | |
| #### Examples of behaviour and responsibilities | |
| _Below are examples of behaviours and responsibilities a person in this role might be expected to demonstrate. The list is provided for illustrative purposes only._ | |
| - Convinces a client to create a new delivery team focussed on a strategically important problem or opportunity. | |
| - Brings user researchers into an existing client account, which previously didn’t have any UCD roles. | |
| - Brings senior operations, technical and policy leaders into the design process, creating buy-in for the next stage of delivery. | |
| - Advises Chief Design Officer at a government department on recruitment strategy for growing their UCD community | |
| - Regularly sources and hires people for senior UCD roles. | |
| - Regularly speaks and shares ideas in and outside Made Tech about how to run communities of practice. | |
| - Successfully supports someone they line manage to get promoted to a Lead or Principal | |
| - Sets the creative direction for a bid for new work and takes the lead for a bid team | |
| --- | |
| ### Complexity | |
| * Clearly communicate the wider organisational context teams will have to deliver in. | |
| * Identifies and communicates the fundamental problem policies, teams and services that exist to try to solve. S | |
| * hows a deep understanding of their UCD discipline and how it applies to a specific problem space. | |
| * Assesses the design maturity of client organisations and applies a wide range of design and/or management principles suitable for getting good services delivered. | |
| #### Examples of behaviour and responsibilities | |
| _Below are examples of behaviours and responsibilities a person in this role might be expected to demonstrate. The list is provided for illustrative purposes only._ | |
| - Is aware and can explain the client motivations for creating a team in the first place, be those political commitments, legacy tech or operational costs. | |
| - Can explain to teammates and stakeholders how user-centred design will help de-risk a specific project and how it relates to the specific problem area. Be that farming or social housing. | |
| - Leads the development of experimental new services that require emergent technology or user behaviour change. | |
| - Leads strategic discovery phase with the government department to start work on key policy areas, such as planning reforms | |
| - Presents strategic findings at the executive level to a client organisation. Follows up individually with different senior stakeholders. | |
| - Quickly takes policy documents and early conversations to make an MVP prototype. | |
| - Leads the accelerated delivery of new service response to a quick-growing need, such as a pandemic. | |
| - Coaches less senior UCD people to navigate complex and difficult work | |
| --- | |
| ### Knowledge | |
| Develops a deep understanding of design in the UK public sector. | |
| #### Examples of behaviour and responsibilities | |
| _Below are examples of behaviours and responsibilities a person in this role might be expected to demonstrate. The list is provided for illustrative purposes only._ | |
| - Make training videos for Made Tech people new to UCD or design in government, to show how discovery and alpha phases can work. | |
| - Coaches client team to get ready for a GDS service assessment, drawing on their own experiences going through the process. | |
| - Run accessibility talks for client teams who are unsure who to approach designing for people with access needs. | |
| - Speaks at a public panel discussion about Made Tech’s approach to improving the citizen experience of local government. | |
| - Runs introduction to UCD in government as part of Onboarding week at Made Tech | |
| --- | |
| ### Business Skills | |
| * Demonstrates clear leadership. Communicates effectively at all levels to both design and non-design audiences. | |
| * Understands and communicates industry developments, and the role and impact of design in the employing organisation. Absorbs complex information. | |
| * Promotes diversity, inclusion and the need for services, teams and working practices to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with diverse abilities. | |
| * Takes the initiative to keep both their own and colleagues' skills up to date. | |
| * Manages and mitigates risks across client programmes of work and across Made Tech. | |
| ## Examples of behaviours and responsibilities | |
| _Below are examples of behaviours and responsibilities a person in this role might be expected to demonstrate. The list is provided for illustrative purposes only._ | |
| - Speaks at a public panel discussion about Made Tech’s approach to improving the citizen experience of local government. | |
| - Speak to the Head of User Research at a government department about how Made Tech integrates UCD roles with operations in the run-up to a bid. | |
| - Sets the vision for user-centred design at Made Tech and how that fits into the sector’s transformation of public services. | |
| - Proactively gets someone levelling someone’s role who’s performing at a higher level of maturity than we hired them for. | |
| - Blogs about how APIs and thoughtful service design can lay the foundations for quicker, more accurate carbon taxes on vehicles. Frames ideas around the recent and increasing introduction of ultra-low emission zones in UK cities. | |
| - Works closely with stakeholders blocking team delivery due to concerns and unfamiliarity with the agile way of working. Listens to both sides of the sticking points between the team and the stakeholder. | |
| - Works with others to rotate UCD people from teams to improve delivery outcomes and provide better learning opportunities for people to progress. | |
| - Organises away day for their community-of-practice, to facilitate group learning, bonding and get feedback on the vision for the team. | |
| - Creates and runs an Academy session on the fundamentals of user research. | |