Innovation Manager (Strategic Design), P-4, Fixed-Term, Office of Innovation, Learning Hub, Helsinki, Finland (Post #127455)

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

The Office of Innovation (OOI) works to catalyse UNICEF’s and all its partners’ expertise and resources to solve key challenges for children, with a view to continuously ideate and scale the most effective solutions with transformational potential at scale to achieve the child-related SDGs.  The office is doing this by continuously exploring new ways of accelerating results for children, investing across a range of early stage solutions, and harnessing internal and external expertise towards continuously iterating and finetuning the most promising solutions for children through a systematic portfolio management approach, and leveraging all stakeholders’ innovation energy, knowhow and resources from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

The UNICEF Learning Innovation Hub will be the home of the architects of the future of learning. It will be established in Helsinki and supported by the Government of Finland, a global leader in education and technology, with the goal of bringing together the global community to build game changing solutions in education, that can help solve the learning crisis as well as imagine and develop alternative learning futures for all children.

The UNICEF Learning Innovation Hub will support the Reimagine Education initiative through accelerating equitable access to world class digital learning solutions by testing and scaling frontier technologies & innovations hand in hand with UNICEF Country Offices. At the same time, it will create a safe playground for disruption, inviting UNICEF and the learning community to look for solutions outside the traditional sphere and join tech entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, data ninjas, fiction writers, designers, business leaders & others to explore new learning journeys, pedagogical approaches, spaces, and artifacts that help unleash each child’s full potential.  The UNICEF Learning Innovation Hub will bring to the front the voice of young people about the skills they want to acquire to become entrepreneurs of their own life and become forward-thinking powerhouse that re-imagines and builds bright alternative futures that turns learning into a fascinating adventure for all children.

How can you make a difference?

The incumbent will work under the general direction of the Senior Adviser (Learning Innovation) as an experienced strategic design lead to bring demonstrable design leadership and expertise to key initiatives of the Learning Innovation Hub. 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 the Hub’s and OOI’s strategic goals. You will also supervise relevant staff and consultants and take OIC roles.

Under the guidance of the Senior Advisor-Learning Innovation Hub, your key responsibilities will include:

1. Leading the overall strategic design for the Learning Innovation Hub working closely with the Hub’s leadership team, combining design thinking principles and methodologies with skillful problem solving, creativity and facilitating collaboration with multidisciplinary teams to support the realization of the Hub’s mission and deliver key activities. This entails:

• fusing the practices of design and strategy to structure the impact of design at a strategic, operational, and organizational level for the Hub and spotting opportunities in unmet user needs,
• co-creating breakthrough products and services and making the Hub more innovative and agile.
• working with the Hub’s multidisciplinary teams, oversee the integration of design processes, understand better the Hub’s client and user needs, and learn from insights to create holistic strategies towards effective implementation of the Hub’s activities and initiatives.
• Supporting the Learning Pioneers and Learning Explorers programmes of the Hub, including the architects of digital learning futures workshops (using future design thinking methodologies), innovation camp, portfolio of edtech tools, design workshops, monitoring and evidence generation, and other activities.
• Leading the design of the Learning Cabinet, a platform of curated edtech tools, bringing it to life, working with Learning Cabinet Product Manager and the team supporting it, including the service design aspects for intended Learning Cabinet users.
• Providing support and capacity building to the Learning Hub’s portfolio projects.
• Working with the Hub teams, support the testing of products or their prototypes at various stages to collect user feedback and evaluate their progress. This involves designing and executing user testing sessions, collecting feedback data, and creating reports for communicating the information gathered to improve the product/initiative.
• producing user requirements, personas, journey maps, scenarios, flows, etc. to give shape to and communicate any preliminary idea(s) for the Learning Hub initiatives.

2. Building the professional capacity of the Learning Innovation Hub on design thinking and support the development of new services offerings and improvements to current offerings that align with the Hub’s mission.

• Design and deliver trainings on design thinking methodologies for the Learning Innovation Hub team and its partners, including potentially UNICEF Country Offices to build key skillsets in line with the Hub’s mission.
• Bring ideas to life through an interactive, human-centric approach and engage project teams through the entire journey.
• Support the Hub teams in applying analytical and critical thinking skills to identify operational issues or challenges that may affect efficiency, productivity, or collaboration, and use expertise to help generate solutions.
• Work with the Global Learning Innovation Hub’s leadership team to support the development of new service offerings and improvements to current offerings that align with the Hub’s mission.

3. Integrating design-thinking processes and methodologies in the research, evidence generation and analysis for the Learning Innovation Hub initiatives.

• Develop research field visit guidelines for the Learning Innovation Hub, incorporating design principles and methodologies that will become an integral component of the Hub’s country visits and work with countries.
• Participate in field visits and provide hands-on support in applying the guidelines.
• Support research and analysis for the Hub to collect useful insights relating to user needs, sector(s) best practices, and market/industry trends.
• Advise and where applicable lead on research methodologies integrating empathetic and intuitive approaches to help identify opportunities and understand the sectors the Hub works in to identify pain points, preferences, and priorities. This includes support to analyzing research findings.
• Support and develop powerful, impactful, and evidence-driven strategies for the Hub and business/investments cases for its initiatives working with the Partnership Specialist and OOI partnership team.
• Working with the Hub teams, support the identification, monitoring and data collection of success metric/KPIs for the Hub’s key initiatives.
• Using data visualization techniques, support the Hub in presenting complex information in motivational and intuitive ways that are easy to understand.

4. Providing expertise in visual assets and visual collaboration tools for the Learning Innovation Hub.

• Guide the design of visual assets and branding for the Hub, working closely with the Communication Specialist and the OOI Communications Team.
• Develop guidance and capacity building on visual collaboration tools for the Hub, aimed at facilitating effective collaboration.
• Apply design methodologies to provide technical guidance and prepare compelling and insightful creative briefs related to the work of the Learning Innovation Hub.
• Lead the visual design of Hub materials, presentations, reports. This includes converting data into visual representations, such as infographics, diagrams, graphs, or charts that convey meaningful information.

5. Lead on building a design team within the Learning Innovation Hub to support its mission, including supporting the onboarding of the new team members.

• Support the recruitment of relevant posts and consultancies (individual or institutional) as well as partnerships, including supporting their onboarding.
• Supervise relevant posts and consultancies (individual or institutional). This includes potential design researchers, visual designers, etc.
• Lead the Strategic Design team’s deliverables, responsibilities, and schedules by setting priorities, assigning resources, and ensuring project goals are achieved.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in strategic design, service design, UX, information design, graphic design, business, marketing, or another relevant field.
• A minimum of eight (8) years of relevant professional experience in applicable fields, such as strategic consulting, growth-focused work, insight, entrepreneurship.
• Demonstrated experience of providing strategy guidance applying design-thinking principles and methodologies is required.
• Experience in working on and leading diversely skilled teams, and navigating the translation needed across disciplines and organizations is required.
• Proven experience planning, designing, facilitating, and synthesizing workshops and team trainings.
• 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.
• Provided experience in conducting user research and participating in all aspects of design research qualitatively and quantitatively, including planning, executing, analysis, synthesis, deliverable creation.
• Experience in working in start-up environments towards scale, being an advocate for human-centered design in agile/lean practice and interaction design and resource constrained teams an advantage.
• Technical competencies must be demonstrated in the following areas:
• Very good understanding, expertise and experience in the principles, goals, and systems of design strategy. This includes professional experience in roles that involve substantial strategy guidance.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate and consult with multidisciplinary teams to help them integrate design-thinking strategies, learn from insights, and understand needs of target users. This includes strong collaboration and communication.
• Strong technical skills in application of design methodologies in research and analysis. This includes demonstrated understanding of research approaches to identify actionable insights on user needs and market/industry trends and employ an empathetic and intuitive approach to user research.
• Demonstrated problem solving skills employing design-thinking strategies to create innovative solutions to intricate or nuanced challenges. This can involve implementing design-thinking methodologies, including defining problem statements, prototyping, empathizing with users, and ideating solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to generate original ideas and stimulate the creativity of others. This includes use of divergent thinking techniques, such as brainstorming, to establish environments where creative solutions can emerge.
• Very good project management skills to help organize, plan, and execute initiatives. This includes creating realistic timelines, allocating resources, and collaborating with team members to deliver projects within projected deadlines and budgets.
• Demonstrated strong data visualization techniques to present complex information in motivational and intuitive ways that are easy to understand. This includes supporting the creation and implementation of data-driven initiatives and align all involved parties.
• Knowledge of UI and brand design 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.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others. (8) Nurtures, leads, and manages people

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework 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.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.
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 is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. 

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Should you be selected for a position with UNICEF, you either must be inoculated as required or receive a medical exemption from the relevant department of the UN. Otherwise, the selection will be cancelled.

All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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.

Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Contact: For any queries, please contact: [email protected]