Consultancy: User Experience & Interaction Specialist, Office of Innovation, New York, USA, 11.5 months

We are seeking a User Experience and Interaction (UX/UI) Specialist to support various tech verticals and priorities of the Innovation Fund within the Office of Innovation. The specialist will collaborate with an interdisciplinary team to develop, prototype and advise on new products and solutions. Experience with open-source technology and building solutions in a variety of environments is essential. Duty Station: New York Duration: 11.5 months

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 take 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 (UX/UI) 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 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 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 into simplified and articulate way.

Main responsibilities will be:

• Work closely and play a supportive role between the Blockchain Team/Project Connect Team and developers to continue a healthy evolution of current and future projects such as The Atrium, Project Connect and Credentials
• Provide support and capacity building to Innovation Fund-supported portfolio companies
• Create mockups and wireframes for websites, software, and dashboards for different projects, as necessary and ensure branding guidelines are upheld across the various mediums.
• Produce user requirements, personas, storyboards, 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 related or other relevant field
  *A first university degree (Bachelor's) in a relevant field combined with 7 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) is an asset.

For every child, you demonstrate…

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

The competencies required for this post are:

• Relating and Networking (Level II)
• Apply Technical Expertise (Level II) 
• Creating and Innovating (Level II)

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, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

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.

Duty Station: New York

Duration: 11.5 months