Strategic Design Lead Consultant, Global Learning Innovation Hub, 6 months, home based

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...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 start-up 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.

Our Team

The Global Learning Innovation Hub has recently been established in Helsinki with the mission to radically transform education around the world by making it a wonderful adventure for every child. Working with corporates and non-profit partners, the Learning Innovation Hub supports governments in accelerating access to digital learning; invests from pilot to scale on game-changing edtech innovations and explores how new innovative pedagogies and technologies can create environments where children can learn, unleash their unique talent, and become true entrepreneurs of their life. It is part of Reimagine Education initiative and has the bold ambition to become a global “home for the architects of the future of learning”.

One of the key priorities of the Learning Innovation Hub is the Learning Pioneers Programme. It is a two-year hybrid experience for UNICEF Country Offices (COs) who want to partner with the Learning Innovation Hub in bringing innovative approaches that harness the power of digital learning. Learning Pioneer Countries will work hand-in-hand with the Learning Innovation Hub to pilot and accelerate digital learning tools and co-design the different interventions for successful roll out that can be scaled to multiple countries and lead to improved children’s learning and developmental outcomes.

How can you make a difference?

UNICEF’s Global Learning Innovation Hub is looking for an experienced strategic design lead to bring demonstrable design leadership and expertise to key initiatives of the Learning Innovation Hub, including to the Learning Pioneers Programme. A successful candidate has the ability to act as a decisive design team lead, product owner, mentor, trainer, team player and partner, crafting thoughtful concepts driven by strategic insight and demonstrating how unconventional thinking can lead to world-class sustainable solutions. You master the human centered design process and methodologies inside and out and are also able to transfer that knowledge to the team through guidelines, templates, and training. When needed, you create prototypes, facilitate workshops, and offer design support as necessary, while keeping your eye on ultimate strategic goals.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Design and delivery of the Learning Innovation Camp for Learning Pioneers in Helsinki, Finland, to a group of Learning Pioneers from UNICEF Country Offices and partner governments. The Learning Innovation Camp is a 1-week full immersive experience to dive into how to build digital learning futures. The programme should include lectures, hands-on workshops, side visits and networking events covering introduction to EdTech and digital pedagogies, design thinking, lean startup approach, frontier tech literacy, etc. The consultant will work closely with a company that will organize the Innovation Camp to ensure the design and vision for the Innovation Camp is realized.
• Develop human-centered design research field visit guidelines for a series of field visits for a Landscape of Possible Learning Futures analysis. These visits are part of a discovery phase of the Learning Pioneer Country Office experience, including desk review combined with an in-country visit from the Hub for interviews and agile user research to understand the local context of each Learning Pioneer Country and serve as a blueprint to understand the possible futures that can be explored by leveraging digital learning.
• Design and deliver the Architects of Digital Learning Futures Workshops. Based on the landscape analysis, the Learning Hub team will facilitate a workshop in each Learning Pioneer Country to collaboratively explore possible digital learning futures and together with governments, teachers, parents and young people imagine what different scenarios might look like. Using future design thinking methodologies, it will help imagine what alternatives learning journeys can be built, and back cast into the present to identify the different interventions needed to achieve so. The outcome will be a set of 2-3 concrete challenges to match with digital learning tools, and a clear roadmap covering the different interventions.
• Support the Learning Innovation Hub team in summarizing the design research from desk research, field visits and workshops, through advising on how to apply a design research lens to the data
• Lead on building up a design team within the Learning Innovation Hub to support its mission, including supporting the onboarding of the new team members.

• Design and deliver trainings on HCD methodologies, including HCD workshop facilitation and training of trainers to the Learning Innovation Hub team, to build key skillsets in line with the Hub’s mission.

• Overall Strategic Design Support to the Learning Innovation Hub, including:

• Bring ideas to life through an iterative, human-centric approach. Engage project teams through the entire project journey.

• Collaborate closely with the Business and Education teams to establish and contribute to portfolio strategic goal development and business objectives.
• Provide structure to potentially amorphous or evolving processes by writing compelling and insightful creative briefs.
• Fuse the practices of design and strategy to structure the impact of design at a strategic, operational, and organizational level.
• Work with the Global Learning Innovation Hub’s leadership team to support the development of new services offerings and improvements to current offerings that align with the Hub’s mission.

Please see the Terms of Reference (ToR) attached. Updated TOR -Design Lead LIH hub 6.11.2023.docx

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

• An advanced University Degree in Design (Graphic Design, Strategic Design, Information Design, Interaction Design, Service Design, UX or related field). A first degree + 2 years of additional experience would be considered in lieu of a master’s degree.
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in applicable fields, such as strategic consulting, growth-focused work, insight, entrepreneurship.
• Proven experience in planning, designing, facilitating, and synthesizing workshops.
• Proven experience with driving and applying user-centered design processes.
• Proven experience creating experience maps, user journeys, service blueprints, flows, and wireframes.
• Working knowledge of “Futures Design” methodology.
• Fluency in industry-standard design applications (Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, Sketch, Mural, Miro, Google Slides, PowerPoint).
• Experience working on and leading diversely skilled teams, and navigating the translation needed across disciplines and organizations.
• Knowledge of the environment in which UNICEF operates and understanding the constraints of working in a developing-world environment.
• Familiarity with UNICEF’s mission and the education space is 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.

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel during the assignment, this will be planned and agreed with the supervisor.
• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.
• Any possible travel costs will be covered by UNICEF as per standard UN travel procedure. (not to be included in the quotation).

Payment details and further considerations

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed quality deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.
• Consultant is responsible for their own health and travel insurance.

How to apply:

• Applicants are required to enclose a portfolio of related design work (strategic design / service design / ux/ui / futures design / visual design) that they have worked on / delivered, specifying the applicant’s specific role in each product / project, and including links to the product / project website / report etc. where applicable.
• Interested applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee. Please see the financial proposal template. Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered****.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

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.