We are recruiting for a Lead Product Designer (Centre for Collective Intelligence Design)!
About Nesta
We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet.
For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation.
Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk
About Collective Intelligence
Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design helps create new ways for communities to use technology to harness their insights, ideas and power to act on the problems that matter to them and create the futures they want. We know well-designed systems can help promote healthy collective action at scale, but too often technology is designed to solve the needs of individuals or large organisations.
Our mission is to design digital tools and products that allow communities to respond collectively to challenges, and that help public and voluntary sector institutions strengthen trust and collaboration with citizens.
We work with Nesta’s mission teams and external partners to help them understand where and how collective intelligence approaches can help address the problems they’re working on. We apply collective intelligence design – which brings together insights from diverse groups of people, with new sources of data (such as sensor or mobile phone data) and digital technologies (including AI) – to develop bespoke solutions to those problems. We use rigorous research methods to test, learn and evaluate each solution.
The Role
Nesta is looking for an exceptional end-to-end digital Lead Product Designer to develop new collective intelligence solutions, advance our work on collective intelligence design, as well as influencing and mentoring others. At the heart of CI design is the ability to effectively combine crowds, data and new digital technologies to tackle complex social challenges. This is a unique opportunity to apply, shape, codify and spread an emerging area of innovation practice. The role of the CI lead product designer is to draw on, apply and further develop the method of collective intelligence design, building our key resources including the Collective Intelligence Design Playbook and the Future of Minds and Machines report. This includes bringing together and facilitate experts from a range of disciplines across Nesta – including data science and engineering, behavioural science and participatory approaches – leading the design and prototyping of new ‘CI’ solutions for Nesta’s missions and external partners. As part of an interdisciplinary team the Lead CI designer will work with the Centre’s researchers and grantees to analyse cutting edge practice and methods, and then turn these insights into codified frameworks, processes, methods and tools for real-world application.
You will be responsible for:
· Leading the research, design, testing and delivery of CI solutions that help deliver social impact on issues from reducing household carbon emissions to tackling obesity
· Researching and identifying strategic opportunities for potential new collective intelligence solutions for Nesta’s mission areas and external clients
· Developing new product/solution concepts, drawing on a wide range of collective intelligence methods and extensive knowledge of existing solutions
· Overseeing and managing the work of CI design team members
· User experience design, including: user research, UX flows, wireframes, prototyping, testing
· Visual interface design, including branding and aesthetics
· Interaction design, including: application design, high-fidelity prototyping, human-computer interaction
· Quality assurance for all products developed by the CI Design team, and working with the Directors to oversee the portfolio of solutions.
· Product strategy and leadership, ensuring the vision and strategic goals for the product are clearly articulated and understood by all product team members
· Developing and maintaining product roadmaps, ensuring they are informed by user insights and focused on outcomes
· Documenting insights from testing and user research, synthesising and sharing results with stakeholders
· Designing and delivering CI design workshops with key target communities and for Nesta’s mission teams and external partners
· Working collaboratively with the Centre’s Principal Researcher, and wider CI networks to analyse cutting edge practice, identify where further research is needed, and develop a programme of experimentation with new methods
· Designing and delivering capability building programmes that enable colleagues and partner organisations to use and embed the principles of Collective Intelligence Design into their work.
· Leading some business development activities.
The Person
Essential
· Substantial experience as a digital product designer in a commercial or not-for-profit environment, working end-to-end
· An enthusiasm for, and commitment to, becoming a recognised expert and practitioner in Collective Intelligence Design, and a desire to address complex social problems
· Experience designing for complex web, mobile and/or desktop products, preferably for public/consumer audiences (rather than B2B)
· Expertise in several core design skills, including UX core skills and prototyping
· Experience in designing/delivering products that use at least one of the core ‘collective intelligence methods’ such as crowdsourcing, citizen science, GIS or webscraping
· Proven ability to lead cross functional Agile teams to develop concepts, build and iterate great products
· Ability to think strategically and systemically to identify opportunities to leverage collective intelligence in new ways to help achieve Nesta’s mission goals
· Able to manage multiple projects and competing priorities, as well as the risks and ethical challenges associated with product development
· Excellent time management – experience of working to tight deadlines and being accountable for design quality and delivery on multiple projects
· Excellent communication and presentation skills, including an ability to communicate concepts, strategies and interdependencies effectively to a wide range of audiences
· Ability to raise the quality of others’ work through work reviews and critiques, thorough documentation, guidance, teaching and mentoring
· An exceptional eye for detail, combined with an ability to rapidly solve problems using everything from a basic sketch to high-fidelity prototypes
· Experience of designing workshops and leading them as a design facilitator
· Outstanding stakeholder management skills; ability to receive and give constructive feedback
· A self-starter with a curious and open mindset, with a willingness to learn from and with others and to apply new methods, and ability to carry out self-directed research and learning
· Experience of navigating complexity and uncertainty, and adapting personal style for a variety of cultural contexts and organisations
· Personal commitment to the principles of data justice, diversity & inclusion and community empowerment
Desirable
· Practical experience of designing and delivering products that enable collective action or behaviour change
· Front-end development skills- HTML/JS/CSS
· Knowledge of multiple collective intelligence methods
· Knowledge of Artificial Intelligence
· Experience of designing products with a social purpose
What we offer
Salary: £53k-£65k plus array of benefits, including health cash plans, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more
Location: This role is based in London, Blackfriars, but we offer flexibility for our people to work remotely
Term: Permanent
Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.
Reports to: Director of CCID
Making an application
To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on the 29th of November 2021.
Interviews will take place w/c 6th of December 2021.
At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.
We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.
This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.
We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.
Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.