Consultancy, User experience and interaction Specialist, 11.5 months, Remote

Contract

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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, innovate

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.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.

UNICEF's Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach -- in a traditionally risk-averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children.

The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

As part of this role, the UX/UI Specialist will support various efforts within the Office of Innovation, including projects related, but not limited to our data science, blockchain, XR and drones work. In this role, the Specialist will work with a variety of teams from the concept stage to delivering the final design package. Our team takes large ideas and makes them a reality; being able to communicate complex and abstract ideas using visual, verbal and written language is crucial. As the Office of Innovation works with UNICEF offices around the world and in a variety of scenarios, we are seeking someone who has a portfolio of strong, accessible design work for web and mobile. It is important that the Specialist have knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of web and mobile technologies and ideally some experience that extends beyond screen based designs.

How can you make a difference?

We seek a strong self-motivated top-level User Experience & Interaction Specialist who can maintain strong design sensibilities even under tight time constraints, who can work with a diverse interdisciplinary team to create a plan of action to best communicate ideas visually and who can maintain clarity in their work while juggling and prioritizing several projects at once. This position will range from project support to owning projects and seeing them through to completion.

We seek someone who can work closely with the Innovation Fund team to support start-ups in the investment portfolio as well as work with in-house project teams, but who also can prove they can task manage and follow-through on projects independently. Due to the diversity of the role, the team is looking for a hybrid designer, who can ideally work across various devices and platforms. The candidate should exemplify a strong expertise in user experience and interaction design, research and consultation for web-based designs, apps, and data information systems, information architecture and systems mapping design.

The ideal candidate will be a user experience and interaction professional who has experience with complex systems and who is able to toggle between a number of projects at the same time. The ideal candidate must have a strong sense of UNICEF’s programmes and goals, who expresses a passion for designing for social impact through their portfolio, who has experience communicating easily with a diverse range of staff and who has a knack for extrapolating information from team members that can be translated in a simplified and articulate way.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Work closely with and play a supportive role between the Blockchain Team / Giga Team and developers to continue a healthy evolution of current and future projects such as Juniper, Project Connect and ProCoChain
• Coordinate the work of vendors who will iterate on concepts already established by the Innovation Team, such as in the case of The Atrium
• Provide support, mentorship and capacity building to Innovation Fund-supported portfolio companies
• Create and validate mockups and wireframes for websites, software, and dashboards for different projects, as necessary while ensuring that branding and technical guidelines are upheld across the various mediums.
• Produce user requirements, personas, storyboards, journey maps, scenarios, flow charts etc. to give shape to any preliminary idea.
• Support on maintaining and evolving other products that have digital interface components.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in interaction 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 UX/UI product design experience
• Strong information design experience with a solid foundation in UX design research and heuristics
• Strong understanding of design systems and front-end architecture
• Experience in creating interactive prototypes in tools like Sketch, Adobe CC, Invision, etc.
• Preferred knowledge of capabilities and limitations of Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
• 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.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The functional competencies required for this post are...

• Relating and Networking - Level 2
• Apply Technical Expertise - Level 2
• Creating and Innovating - Level 2

View our competency framework at

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

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 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.

Payment details and further considerations

• 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

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.