- APS 5, APS 6, Executive Level 1, Executive Level 2
- [GROUP/TEAM]
- [POSITION LOCATION]

PLEASE NOTE, THIS OPPORTUNITY IS ONLY OPEN TO CURRENT COMMONWEALTH EMPLOYEES.

Type of temporary chance: Micro-assignment
Duration of opportunity: 1 month
Working arrangement: Part-Time
Classification: APS 5 to Executive Level 2
Contact Officer: Beini Zhang, (02) 6202 3576
Closing Date: 11:30PM AEST, Sunday, 31 January 2027

What were looking for

We’re looking for people who have a depth of experience working in human centred design, user research or service design. We’re particularly looking for people who have used the Service Design and Delivery Process.

We’re seeking design practitioners to coach small groups through our online human centred design 101 training, in partnership with other design practitioners.

We’re looking for people with lots of stories of work they’ve done and real examples that they can share and talk through with people.

We’ve found people with more than 4 years experience as a user researcher or service design practitioner usually have a good range of stories and examples to share.

The commitment

We’re running an online course. This will be 1.5 – 3 hours each week for 12 weeks. The group for training would likely be 25 - 35 people, but you will have a group of 6 – 9 in breakouts.

The?employee?will?need?their?home?manager’s?support?to?take?a?micro-assignment?opportunity?and?their?home?team?will?continue?to?pay?the?employee.

Course duration: 23 July – 26 November 2026?

- - Information session (optional) - Thursday, 23 July, 1pm - 1.30 pm
- Overview and kick-off - Thursday, 6 August, 1pm - 3pm
- Problem definition - Thursday, 13 August, 1pm - 3pm
- Interviewing development - Thursday, 20 August, 1pm - 2.30 pm
- Interview practice session - Thursday, 27 August, 1pm - 2.30pm
- Optional drop-in session (Interview prep with buddy group) - Thursday, 3 September, 1pm - 3pm?
- Mini showcase - Thursday, 17 September, 1pm - 2pm?
- Theming and insights - Thursday, 24 September, 1pm - 2.30pm
- Design questions and communicating design - Thursday, 8 October, 1pm - 3pm
- Journey map - Thursday, 15 October, 1pm - 2.30pm
- Ideation - Thursday, 22 October, 1pm - 2.30pm




- Prototype development and testing - Thursday, 29 October, 1pm - 3.30pm
- Showcase (optional) - Thursday, 12 November, 1pm - 2.30pm
- Retrospective (optional) - Thursday, 26 November, 1pm - 1.30 pm

There is also a 20 minute briefing session each week a few days before the virtual class.

We'll also use Miro for every class, so it’s worth checking if you can access Miro on your work device or work from a personal laptop for the class times.

Skills and capability we need

We’re looking for people who have a depth of experience working in human centred design, user research or service design. We’re particularly looking for people who have used the Service Design and Delivery Process.

We’re looking for people with lots of stories of work they’ve done, examples they can share and the confidence to answer those curly questions students like to ask.?

We’re using practitioner led learning, so we’re looking for people with 4 or more years experience as a user researcher or service design practitioner.

We’re not looking for people with experience as trainers. You don’t need to have training skills. We really value your experience working as a human centred designer, user researcher or service designer.

The course covers a broad range of areas including:

- - problem definition
- developing research questions
- interview techniques
- theming and developing insights
- journey mapping
- ideation
- prototyping
- showcases
- retrospectives?

Ideally you’ll be familiar with all of these topics and tools and have examples you can share with your group. We’d like someone who is confident facilitating small groups but you’ll be working with others so we’re open to people looking to develop their facilitation and storytelling skills. We don’t mind if you get a little nervous speaking to large groups (we do too!).



We’ll support you to build up your facilitation skills in small groups but also give you the option of facilitating the larger group.

What you will gain from the experience

This would be ideal opportunity for someone who is an experienced design practitioner who wants to build their facilitation and coaching skills.

It’s a chance to grow your network and access training materials you can reuse in your home agency.

You can bring a student from your agency free of cost as a small thank you for your time.

About our team

We’re a distributed team working across multiple projects. We use agile and human centred design and regularly train people in these disciplines.

Additional Information

We’re looking for multiple people, as we run training on a regular basis and would like a group of people to cover several sessions across the year.

- Please note, this opportunity is only open to current commonwealth employees.
- To commence the application process, you will need to email your current CV to contact officer Beini Zhang - [email protected]
- Temporary opportunities on the mobility jobs board are open to people who are already employed by the Commonwealth. You can read more about eligibility on the APSJobs FAQ page.
- Employee will be engaged through a micro-assignment and will be supported by an informal agreement rather than a full Memorandum of Understanding – through an email agreement. The Employee will more than likely work remotely off their usual work device or via a sharing platform like GovTEAMS – employee access to the host agency’s network or offices may not be needed. The employee will need their home manager’s support to take a micro-assignment opportunity and their home team will continue to pay the employee while they’re on a micro-assignment.
- The Australian Public Service Commission is committed to building an inclusive and culturally diverse workforce. We welcome applications from across our community including, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women, people with disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those who identify as LGBTIQ+, mature aged employees and carers.

📌 Mirco-Assignment - Human Centred Design Coach (Australia)
🏢 Australian Public Service Commission
📍 Australia