Requisition ID: req3902
Job Title: Regional Design Specialist - Beirut
Sector: Research & Development
Employment Category: Regular
Employment Type: Full-Time
Location: Beirut, Lebanon
Job Description
Based in Beirut, the Design Specialist will drive conception, ideation and design of new solutions to the most compelling problems facing Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, bringing together design methodologies, community voices, and rigorous evidence. The Design Specialist will lead all aspects of the Regional Innovation Hub’s design research, leveraging a variety of human centered design methodologies and tools to develop and test innovative solutions across the Hub’s diverse portfolio. This person will also be responsible for leading a small team of community members trained in design methodologies, building their capacity through mentorship and ongoing trainings and overseeing the quality of their work.
Major Responsibilities:
Support project pipeline with design perspective from challenge definition through to high-fidelity prototype
- Structure and develop design processes across the portfolio of regional innovation hub projects
- Lead on planning and conducting regional innovation hub's design research for various projects across the portfolio, (across digital, environmental, and physical disciplines) including, but not limited to: systems, behavior, and user journey mapping; conducting focus groups and user research
- Work with different country program teams to understand the most critical challenges they face; to identify the most powerful, interesting, and relevant questions to ask; imagine and create the most appropriate methods to answer them
- Contribute to or lead the development of workplanning documents outlining the goals and implementation plan of any new research initiative
- Working with R&D team, contribute or lead ideation sessions designed to integrate different perspectives
- Lead ideation workshops with staff in Lebanon and Jordan
- Ensure that IRC client, staff, and community voices are compellingly represented in the design of new solutions
- Plan and conduct qualitative research with community members, leveraging a variety of methodologies to gather insights
- Work with field team to develop, test, and roll out tools to better understand the challenge from the perspective of affected populations, including refugees and host community
- Ensure all tools are implemented “where people are” and “in their language”, including potential field testing specific words or phrases used; and conducting interviews in people’s homes, shadowing someone throughout the day, etc.
- Develop sacrificial concepts/prototypes informed by design research as well as academic literature and other qualitative and quantitative research
- Lead user testing, synthesize feedback and learnings, and provide recommendations for strategic, system, and/or product changes in response
- Lead synthesis and production of final concepts and communication materials
Management of design consultants/roster
- Identify and cultivate relationships with strategic partners who can provide design expertise on projects
- Manage small team of junior designers and/or roster of consultants, providing quality assurance and oversight over team’s work
- Develop and manage designers’ workplans, ensuring sufficient staffing across projects and reasonable workloads
- Build capacity of staff, with ongoing trainings on human centered design methodologies, tools and techniques and provide ongoing mentorship
- Develop a roster of field staff who can support design research
- Conduct training for field staff to support design research as needed
Communicate findings from research and prototyping
- Working with interdisciplinary team, identify key audiences for the research, and combine and present key findings in an easily consumable format, including through visual insights or written pieces.
- Share stories from the field to inspire the selected teams to synthesize the research findings into meaningful directions for design to provoke convenient and relevant solutions.
- Document the process through photographs, drawings, blogs and other communication pieces for the purposes of sharing IRC’s innovation work more broadly
Key Working Relationships:
Position Reports to: Regional Innovation Director
Position directly supervises: Design Researcher Consultants
Indirect Reporting: N/A
Other Internal and/or external contacts:
Internal: Operations Coordinator, Strategy and Communications Specialist, HQ innovation team staff
External: Key public sector design and innovation schools, institutions, and professional societies, private sector design companies
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree with at least 6 years of professional or equivalent academic experience.
- Experience deploying human-centered design techniques in a wide range of product and service design projects
- Confidence in rapid prototyping new services and products (low and high fidelity) and iterating them in response to successive rounds of feedback
- A track record of successful products/services launched (preferably in development/humanitarian contexts)
- Deep understanding of at least one design discipline (e.g. product design, UX, behavioral science)
- Strong management experience
- Strong synthesis skills and confidence distilling complex data into actionable insights
- Strong ability to lead/moderate design workshops
- Drive to use skills for social impact, and dedication to making the world a better place for the most vulnerable
- Excellent interpersonal skills, able to communicate with colleagues on all levels in a distributed, multicultural professional environment
- Able to train others to use human-centered design disciplines, and manage others conducting design processes
- Confidence with quantitative data and academic literature informing design process
- Fluency in English and Arabic required
Working Environment:
●Based in Beirut, Lebanon
●Standard office work environment
●For international candidates, a generous housing and allowances package is included.
●Regular travel between Jordan and Lebanon
IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including a flexible hours (when applicable), parental leave, and gender-sensitive security protocols.
Attention Returning National Candidates:We strongly encourage national or returning national candidates to apply for this position. If you are a national of Jordan and are currently located outside of your home country and possess over two years of international work experience, the Middle East Region has introduced an attractive remuneration package. The package includes competitive compensation, return flight to post, shipping allowance, temporary housing and a relocation allowance. Certain restrictions may apply. IRC strives to attract, motivate and retain qualified Jordanian national staff in our programs.
