Consultancy - Giga, User Interface Design Specialist, Home-based, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, connect

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

UNICEF and ITU have launched “Giga”, https://gigaconnect.org/ a new initiative to connect every school to the internet, and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. It also serves as a platform to create the infrastructure necessary to provide digital connectivity to an entire country, for every community, and for every citizen.

Providing connectivity to the world remains a challenge. According to the ITU, nearly 3.7 billion people remain unconnected from the internet, and by extension, unconnected to digital products and services that could dramatically improve their lives. Approximately 29% of 18-24-year-olds, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, do not have digital access (~360m people) and thereby lack access to the same information, opportunity and choice as their more-connected peers. Unless things change, a big part of this rapidly growing group of young people is in danger of being left behind, excluded from the modern digital world.

Closing the digital divide requires global cooperation, leadership, and innovation in finance and technology. Giga leverages data, innovative finance and new technologies to bring the power of meaningful connectivity to fast-track young people’s access to educational resources and opportunities.

How can you make a difference?

We seek a creative, self-motivated UI Design Specialist who has a passion for 1) maintaining strong, user-facing design sensibilities across products and 2) collaborating with diverse interdisciplinary team to communicate and execute ideas. This position will own Giga’s and Project Connect’s https://projectconnect.unicef.org/ product design ideation, see it through from MVP launch, and data-driven, iterative improvements. The UI Design Specialist will also collaborate with Giga team and its partners to advise on new products or solutions that will help Project Connect achieve the ambitious goal of connecting every school, and every community to the Internet. Our team takes large ideas and makes them a reality; being able to communicate complex and abstract ideas using data-driven decisions and clear visual, verbal and written language is crucial.

The team is looking for a UI Design Specialist with experience designing products across various devices and platforms, ideally for low-bandwidth environments. The candidate should exemplify a strong expertise in Agile/Lean practice and interface design for web-based designs, apps, data information systems, information architecture and systems mapping design.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Work closely with the Giga tech team to continue a healthy evolution and the global scale of current and future Giga products such as Project Connect, Patchwork Kingdoms, NFT2 and Blockchain.
• Create and validate wireframes, low- and high-fidelity mockups that support the technical development of websites, applications, software, and dashboards while ensuring that branding and technical guidelines are upheld across these platforms.
• Produce user personas, journey maps, scenarios, flows etc. to give shape to and communicate any preliminary idea.
• Own product UI lifecycle, from prototype, MVP launch and ongoing, versioned iterations.
• Work as part of Giga’s design team in the development and maintenance of Giga brand and products across multiple channels and the development of internal and external facing visual assets to support this.
• Support in maintaining and evolving Giga brand identity across products in user interface components, including supporting the design of visuals (imagery, typography, logos, iconography, charts, interface components etc.).
• Coordinate the work of vendors and/or external partners who will support or iterate on concepts already established by the Giga team, providing design leadership, guidance and ensuring quality of their work.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in user interface design, human-computer interaction, information design and information architecture or other relevant field. *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience in digital UI design experience
• Strong understanding of design systems and front-end architecture for websites, mobile applications, data visualization and content management systems.
• In-depth understanding of typography and fundamentals of graphic design like colour, form, composition etc.
• Experience in creating interactive prototypes in tools like Sketch, Adobe CC, Invision, and Collaboration tools such as GitHub, Trello, Slack, Jira and Miro.
• Knowledge of capabilities and limitations of Web-based technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, ML/AI.
• Experience working in start-up environments towards scale, being an advocate for human-centered design in Agile/Lean practices and resource constrained teams
• Knowledge of UX design research and heuristics is an asset
• Curiosity and willingness to learn about emerging Open-source technologies and communities are an asset.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Payment details and further considerfations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).

The competencies required for this post are:

• Innovates and Embraces Change - Lv 2
• Drive to achieve results for impact - Lv 2
• Works collaboratively with others - Lv 2

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.