Service designer
- Level
- 6
- Typical duration
- 24 months (about 2 years)
- Max funding band
- £15,000
- End-point assessment
- 6 months
- Route
- Business and administration
Improve or redesign services currently offered and develop or design new service propositions to meet the needs of the user as well as the business and other stakeholders.
About the role
This occupation is found in the private, public and third sector, local, national, and multinational organisations and employers. Relevant sectors include the health sector, finance sector, business and professional services, retail sector, technology sector, government, public sector, and the charity sector. There has been a growing demand for service design skills to be embedded within culture and governance structures to support future ways of working.
The broad purpose of the occupation is to improve/redesign services currently offered or develop/design new service propositions to meet the needs of the user as well as the business and other stakeholders. Service designers take a user-centred, collaborative and exploratory approach to design the new service, iterating toward implementation.
They work collaboratively with service/product owners and multidisciplinary teams; to (re)design services:
- from end to end (the start of a process to the very end step they take),
- from front to back (both user-facing and back office to create a seamless service) and
- cross-channel (to seamlessly and often interchangeably deliver the service through the various available platforms, which sometimes - but not always - include digital touch points).
In short, the purpose of a services designer is to (re)design services collaboratively and iteratively, taking a user-centred approach.
In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with a wide range of internal stakeholders, from front-line staff to service managers, senior leaders to heads of the organisation. If involved in the research, they also interact with a range of external stakeholders, which may include members of the public and individuals working in other organisations. They may, in large organisations, report to programme boards and to shareholders in private sector organisations. They often work in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams (through formal or informal arrangement) which may include marketing, finance, communications, logistics, project management, HR, digital (developers, systems/solutions architects) and user research.
Service Designers enable services to be (re)designed in a user/customer-centred way and therefore the most important stakeholder is the end user/service beneficiary.
An employee in this occupation will be responsible for guiding and facilitating the (re)design of a service, product, or solution; ensuring the work is user-centred. Increasingly, service designers design with the environment as a key stakeholder, creating services that serve the triple bottom line (profit, people, planet).
Service Designers are responsible for guiding, leading, facilitating and educating those involved in the (re)design, providing adequate challenge to ensure that they are responding to the right problem statement, that the scope of the work is appropriately sized and the limitations (i.e. with technology or the outcome an organisation wants to achieve) are understood to ensure anything (re)designed is viable.
They are responsible for selecting the most useful methodologies, tools, and techniques for use in the service design and continually work between a macro and micro view, ensuring the work has pace/is progressing and that the strategic view is not lost within the work.
Service Designers are expected to understand and contribute to budgets and return on investment considerations. In larger organisations, they may have management oversight of their own budgets.
How it compares
At 24 months (about 2 years), it is shorter than average for a degree-level apprenticeship (the average across all 172 Level 6+ standards is 39 months).
The funding band — the maximum an employer's levy can contribute to training costs — is £15,000, below the £21,500 average for degree-level standards. Apprentices never pay tuition either way.
Typical job titles
- Experience designer
- Human-centred designer
- Service designer
What you'll learn
The official standard defines 11 core duties, 21 knowledge areas, 26 skills, 6 behaviours. This is the actual assessed content of the apprenticeship — worth reading before an interview, because competency questions are usually written straight from these lists.
Core duties 11
- Question and challenge the design brief in order to lead, influence and guide stakeholders to determine the scope of the service design work, both strategically and operationally.
- Define and conduct research activities including primary/secondary research using both qualitative and quantitative data to fully understand users and their needs as well as the context of a service.
- Synthesise research to build themes and clusters, find insights, and discover opportunity areas for improving the experience of the user.
- Analyse, interpret and communicate complex information or data sets from the research to build a case and direction for change.
- Develop multiple potential solutions to the design brief using ideation tools and techniques
- Prototype, test with users and analyse potential solutions, making continuous improvements to designs and selecting ideas that best deliver the desired impact on a user’s experience of a service and the environmental and economic needs of the organisation.
- Direct the transition from prototype into pilot projects through working with the service areas who will take this forward and lead on-going evaluation, including creating clear success metrics for the improved service.
- Lead the design of services through engaging with and influencing stakeholders, colleagues, and service users.
- Develop others with the skills needed to contribute to the work through coaching, mentoring, shadowing, working collaboratively or delivering training.
- Manage time frames and guide budget decisions, working within organisational project management processes, and manage risks in order to meet business needs.
- Manage and lead ongoing change and identify individuals and groups who are able to make a case for a service design approach for future change requirements.
Knowledge 21
- The theory and history of the discipline of service design, including definitions and principles, the different perspectives, approaches, or schools of thought.
- How and when service design practices can be used to design and improve services.
- Other business areas and professions involved in the design of services such as research, UX, technology, policy, and delivery.
- The use of creative processes involved in design such as user-centred design approaches and design thinking methods.
- Approaches to mapping a service and when to use them.
- Methodologies for user research and data collection to understand user needs, pain points, opportunities and areas that should be prioritised.
- Ideation tools and techniques to developing potential solutions.
- Methodologies to evaluate prototypes and ideas.
- Continued improvement of a service, using iterative and agile approaches.
- Methods and tools for working collaboratively with groups, teams, and individuals.
- Project management and agile principles and methods.
- Approaches to change management.
- Tools and techniques for prioritisation.
- Techniques for measuring cost, value, risk, and impact of decisions
- Use of current and emerging technologies to inform the design of services.
- Principles of design and research ethics for service design.
- Equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion and how they impact on outcomes for people and organisations.
- Relevant regulatory and legislative requirements such as data protection, GDPR, confidentiality, for the handling and processing of data and its application during a project.
- How a service designer can contribute to a service becoming more environmentally sustainable.
- How to support the continuous development requirements and training and learning needs of people they work with.
- Organisation structures; business modelling; global and horizon scanning perspectives; governance and accountability; technological and policy implications.
Skills 26
- Champion and advocate the benefits of service design and user centred solutions.
- Interpret, analyse, and challenge a design brief.
- Systematically analyse and apply problem-solving techniques to complex service design challenges.
- Use service design methods to design new propositions, products, and services, and improve existing ones.
- Co-design, workshop, and facilitation of service design activities with stakeholders and users.
- Map the current and future states of a service journey collating information from multiple sources to form a single view of the service.
- Select, formulate and apply qualitative and quantitative user research methods and approaches.
- Analyse and evaluate findings from qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand and prioritise user needs.
- Evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts, and data to make judgements, and develop questions to achieve a solution to a problem.
- Select and use ideation methods to generate multiple solutions to complex problems.
- Prioritise potential solutions to select which to take forward to further development.
- Prototype concepts and solutions from low to high degrees of fidelity.
- Evaluate prototype solutions, selecting the most appropriate methodology.
- Select, formulate and apply a range of user testing methods to ensure any service changes create the desired impact.
- Apply user-centred design processes to iteratively develop concepts and solutions.
- Evaluate solutions in place to continually improve the service for users and stakeholders.
- Critically analyse, interpret and evaluate complex information and concepts.
- Communicate complex information, concepts and ideas adapting for different audiences.
- Influence, negotiate and challenge stakeholders in the delivery and decision-making process.
- Considers multiple viewpoints including those of the internal stakeholders, service users and service providers.
- Work with multidisciplinary teams.
- Work ethically and sustainably, to ensure research and design activities are carried out to the highest practice in ethical standards.
- Manage project to timescales and budget requirements.
- Identify and apply emerging industry developments to continuously improve service design practice.
- Provide support, specialist advice, and guidance.
- Identify the training requirements for their teams and stakeholders.
Behaviours 6
- Role models ethical behaviour and practices.
- Considers the “big” picture and the detail together.
- Works flexibly and adapts to circumstances.
- Seeks learning opportunities and continuous professional development.
- Takes responsibility, shows initiative, and is organised.
- Championing the user and putting them at the centre of the design process
Live vacancies
No live vacancies for this course as of 2026-07-24 — new adverts appear on Find an apprenticeship daily, and many degree apprenticeship employers recruit on their own careers sites instead.
Universities registered to deliver it
1 universities are on the government provider register for this standard. Registration means they can deliver it — live vacancies depend on employer partnerships each recruitment cycle.
Related courses in Business and administration
Career development professional
Assisting individuals or organisations before or during career transitions to develop long and short term career strategies.
Chartered manager (degree)
Taking responsibility for long-term organisational success, managing people, projects, operations or services.
Improvement leader
Developing improvement strategies and providing leadership in improvement for a business.
Operational research specialist
Help clients (either internally or externally) to make strategic, tactical and operational decisions.
Official sources
- Official standard page (Skills England)
- Registered training providers (Find apprenticeship training)
Occupational summary, duties, knowledge, skills and behaviours reproduced from the ST0894 apprenticeship standard (last updated 2023-03-28) — contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Always check the official page before applying: standards get revised.