Harmonic – Service Design Talent Community

Harmonic Design is building out its freelance bench, and we're helping them do it.

Good Maven is partnering with Harmonic Design because we share a belief that the best work comes from people who take the craft seriously without taking themselves too seriously. And that a strong community is worth investing in long before you need it. This is us building that community together.

About Harmonic

Harmonic Design is a service design consultancy headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. For nearly a decade, we have helped large organizations, primarily Fortune 500 companies and mission-driven nonprofits, close the gap between strategy and the experiences people actually have. Our work spans discovery through delivery: research, journey design, service concept development, and the organizational capability to sustain what we design together.

We are in an intentional period of growth, taking on harder and more complex problems and building new ways to create value. What is not changing is the purpose underneath it: work that helps organizations become more human, more inclusive, and more sustainable in how they operate, and the belief that craft is what makes that possible, not a byproduct of it.

We are a team of about 25 people, a mix of full-time practitioners and contractors. We are a studio, not a factory. Engagements are complex, client relationships are long, and the thinking we bring to clients also shapes how we run the firm. Day to day, we are warm, kind, supportive and collaborative. We lean into learning, pushing past our comfort zones through a steady cycle of teaching and learning, and we center our humanity, honoring every person as a unique, whole and complete individual. Read more about our values here

Who We're Looking For

At Harmonic, our consultants share a common passion for tackling business and organizational challenges through service design. We look for service designers with experience working both frontstage and backstage, and a passion for ensuring our design work truly addresses our clients' business objectives. We look for people who:

• Get excited by finding new ways to blend human-centered design, systems design, and organizational design to create and sustain change.

• Have deep competencies in multiple areas of practice (strategy, research, frontstage and backstage design, etc)

• Bring a clear point of view, the heart of a teacher, and the judgment to navigate complex environments

• Have deep curiosity and ingenuity to tackle hard problems and form design solutions that cut across functions, channels, and other domains

• Are as excited to change a company policy as a customer touchpoint

• Approach their work collaboratively, enthusiastically, and humbly

Harmonic seeks a diverse range of skills, work experience, and life experience to support collaboration within our small, nimble, and self-managed teams. Our consultants typically have advanced degrees in service design or a related discipline, or they possess extensive consulting, Fortune 500 internal, or and/or startup experience.

Requirements

• Experience in service design work beyond the digital frontstage

• Comfortable working across the service design lifecycle, including strategy, research, journey mapping, ideation and concept creation, workshop design and facilitation, visual and communication design, and service blueprinting

• Skilled and excited to both do and teach service design in complex organizations

• Consulting competencies and experience are a plus if you are a junior, required if you are a senior

• A portfolio demonstrating mastery of service design methods and tools, such as service value proposition definition, journey and experience mapping, service blueprinting, service feature definition, service ecosystem modeling, conceptual design (both frontstage and backstage), roadmap or evolution plans, and the design and execution of service participant research (frontstage and backstage)

Levels of Experience

For contractors, we typically aim to have a bench aligned with three levels within our firm: Service Designer, Senior Service Designer, and Lead Service Designer.

Service Designer (3 to 5 years of experience)

Service Designers are practitioners who have demonstrated the ability to produce good service design work with support and direction. They have broadened and deepened their toolkit but are still developing consulting skills and the ability to handle more complex challenges and situations. Service Designers are expected to do great work for our clients while expanding their individual practice and developing a clear point of view.

Strong in two or more areas of competency:

• Service strategy (connecting service outcomes to business outcomes)

• Design research (qualitative and quantitative)

• Defining models related to delivering service outcomes (journeys, ecosystems, service blueprints, etc)

• Generating and evaluating ideas, concepts, and solutions that address defined problems and outcomes

• Visual and communication design

• Designing and facilitating workshops

• Design and building concepts and prototypes

Key Responsibilities:

• Work constructively as part of a small team under the guidance of an Engagement Lead.

• Own specific pieces of the work as determined by the Engagement Lead and in alignment with your skills and experience.

• Consult with clients directly, drawing on support from more experienced practitioners as needed.

• Clear and timely communication

Senior Service Designer (5 to 8 years of experience)

Senior Service Designers are practitioners who have developed depth across multiple design and research competencies and have increased situational awareness in how to approach a broader range of challenges. They have more developed consulting skills and the ability to coach client practitioners, and have shown they can lead parts of work and may have led projects with guidance.

Strong in three or more areas of competency:

• Service strategy (connecting service outcomes to business outcomes)

• Design research (qualitative and quantitative)

• Defining models related to delivering service outcomes (journeys, ecosystems, service blueprints, etc)

• Generating and evaluating ideas, concepts, and solutions that address defined problems and outcomes

• Visual and communication design

• Designing and facilitating workshops

• Design and building concepts and prototypes

Key Responsibilities:

• Work constructively in a small team under the guidance of an Engagement Lead, or lead less complex engagements aligned with your skills and experience.

• On larger programs, lead parts of the work in alignment with the Engagement Lead

• Own specific pieces of the work as determined by the Engagement Lead and in alignment with your skills and experience.

• Consult with clients directly, drawing on support from more experienced practitioners as needed.

• Clear and timely communication

• Mentor, teach, or coach clients to build their service design capabilities

Lead Service Designer (8+ years of experience)

Lead Service Designers are practitioners who lead engagements and have a proven ability to foster an optimal team climate, drive client satisfaction, and achieve desired engagement outcomes while establishing trusted advisor relationships.

Strong in four or more areas of competency:

• Service strategy (connecting service outcomes to business outcomes)

• Design research (qualitative and quantitative)

• Defining models related to delivering service outcomes (journeys, ecosystems, service blueprints, etc)

• Generating and evaluating ideas, concepts, and solutions that address defined problems and outcomes

• Visual and communication design

• Designing and facilitating workshops

• Design and building concepts and prototypes

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead complex client engagements, often in undefined spaces, while also doing hands-on work.

• Partner with our account leads to keep the engagement on track (time, cost, and impact)

• Create a great climate for the rest of the team to deliver great work and to have a good day at work while doing it.

• Stay aligned with our client's objectives and adapt the work as needed to achieve those outcomes.

• Present to executive-level audiences with the ability to build consensus and buy-in.

• Consult independently with client stakeholders, from individual contributors to management, with limited support.

• Guide less experienced practitioners

• Support business development activities with an existing account

• Mentor, teach, or coach clients to build their service design capabilities

How it works

Right now, we're screening for two things at once: active contract roles that need to be filled, and the bench itself, so when future roles come online, we already know who fits. Everything here is contract-based; there are no full-time openings at the moment, but when permanent roles do open up, Harmonic looks to its network first.

If you're interested, whether for something now or down the road, please submit your resume and portfolio for review. If your profile is a match, the first screen will be with the Good Maven team. We work in lockstep with Harmonic, acting as an extension of their team, and screen against the rubric they've set. Once you pass that initial screen, the remaining interviews continue directly with Harmonic, either for something live now or as relevant projects come up. There's no deadline, and no need to chase. Once you're in the network, you're in.