Mapping your career journey - what’s next for you?

Session type:

Workshop

Presented by:

Stéphanie Krus

Department for Work and Pensions

Charlie Kleboe-Rogers

Opencast

Bahana Saikia

Department for Work and Pensions

Session time:

24 Sep 14:00 — 16:30

Session duration:

120 minutes

About the session

Theme: Careers

***This session will run through the afternoon break***

What’s next for you as a designer?

Whether you’re thinking of transitioning to service design, wondering if you could be a senior or a lead service designer, becoming a contractor, a consultant or a permanent, the speakers will share their own experience and squiggly careers to invite you to reflect on skills you have, previous roles, work or side projects which are assets you might overlook.

The session will alternate talk, individual and group work, using simple service design tools to help you see what opportunities might come next on your career journey.

Participant takeaways:

start reflecting on your career journey
acknowledge skills you might not have realised you had before
understand the difference between working as a permanent, contractor or consultant
the difference between working as a practitioner, senior or lead service designer
get inspiration from others
think of activities that could provide you with the experience you need to move further in your career

This session:

includes interaction
has a number cap: 50 participants

About the speaker(s)

Stéphanie Krus

Stéphanie is a French native designer with a strong focus on accessibility, inclusion and service design. She lives in Scotland and most of her work is in the public sector.

Her squiggly career includes teaching children and adults, testing video games, customer support, web design, software development, UX design, user research and eventually service design, which she never studied but learned by doing in previous roles.

She enjoys mentoring and attending various events about design and accessibility to learn from others. You can find resources around accessibility, inclusion and career changes on her blog.

Pronouns: She/Her

Charlie Kleboe-Rogers

Charlie is a bilingual designer with a passion for building regenerative systems and services.

He lives in Scotland and currently works as a service designer helping to build public services. His squiggly career includes fish mongery, teaching toddlers and young teenagers, educational technology and lecturing before settling into service design, which he did not study. Instead, learning from others and building a network of service design connections brought him on his design journey.

He spends a lot of his spare time crafting, mentoring and coaching emerging designers, particularly ones that are transitioning careers. He is passionate about the Gaelic language and how culture and heritage can play a part in inclusive and accessible service design.

Pronouns: He/his

Bahana Saikia

Bahana is a Service Designer in the UK Civil Service, where she spends her days translating systemic challenges into human-centred services.

She is passionate about trauma-informed design, co-creation, and the belief that the best services emerge from clarity and shared understanding. Her work sits at the intersection of idealism and pragmatism, navigating large systems while keeping the human experience at the centre. Her squiggly career involves being a professional dancer, teaching teenagers and young adults, being a cook and moving from Economics to UX/UI design before loving Service Design.

She believes that good design isn't just about tools and frameworks. It's also about energy, optimism, and creating spaces where people feel safe to contribute. Above all, she's bringing her appetite for honest conversations about the messy, hopeful reality of doing meaningful work, in service design and in life.

Pronouns: She/They