User Experience Designer- CivilSphere, MPMU

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

Civilsphere was born in the Stratosphere laboratory of the Czech Technical University in Prague in 2018. Their mission is to provide journalists, activists, and human rights defendants services and tools to early identify digital threats jeopardizing their life and work. Internews is working with the Civilsphere team to support usability and accessibility enhancements to several of their tools, including Emergency VPN and AI-VPN. The UX Designer will help design and operationalize usability improvements based on user feedback.

LOGISTICS

This is a remote-based, short-term consultancy (October-December 2022).

All remote candidates will be considered. However, you must have work authorization in your location that does not require sponsorship from Internews. Additionally, there are locations in which Internews is not able to support fully remote work.

This position will be hired on a rolling basis and will remain open until hire.

OUR COMMITMENT TO FOSTERING A CULTURE OF BELONGING

We are an organization of dynamic, mission-driven individuals who are passionate about our core values and about supporting positive change in the world. We pride ourselves on our commitment to innovation and flexibility. We believe that diverse teams are strong teams and work to support an ethic of belonging, dignity, and justice for all people. Our current team includes a mix of genders, parents and non-parents, and people of multiple races, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds. We are an EEO employer and encourage candidates of all races, genders, ages, orientations, ethnicities, and national origins to apply, and welcome those with alternative backgrounds and experiences.

Scope of Work

Prototyping and Design Research

• Work closely with the Community Manager to do outreach to current and prospective EmergencyVPN users and research activities such as interviews, surveys, card sorts, and user testing;
• Work with the CivilSphere team to document information about EmergencyVPN and how to use it (e.g., user guide, release notes);
• Lead creation of mockups and interactive prototypes used to support research activities, and used for iterating towards the final design and implementation of agreed upon functionality;
• Design and deliver wireframes, user stories, user journeys, and mockups optimized for a wide range of devices and interfaces;
• Identify design problems and devise solutions;
• Translating user research into insights that can be used to shape development roadmaps for applications and the software gateway;
• Developing use cases to inform better choices for UX and product documentation, with a particular focus on activists, journalists, and human rights-based organizations.

Design and Implementation Support

• Make strategic design and user-experience decisions related to core, and new, functions and features;
• Lead the development of design specifications, the creation of design assets, inventories, acceptance criteria, and other work products used in support of the final implementation;
• Implement frequent touchpoints with the CivilSphere team;
• Work closely with the CivilSphere team to ensure that the proposed solutions fit within the development efforts;
• Create graphic and layout design for the materials such as user guide.

QUALIFICATIONS WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• Extensive experience in using UX design best practices to design solutions, and a deep understanding of mobile-first and responsive design;
• Proven work experience as a UI/UX Designer;
• Up-to-date knowledge of design software;
• Eager to work remotely;
• Self-driven, taking initiative, ability to work independently;
• Proficiency in spoken and written English.

To apply, please submit the following application materials:

• A CV or resume, including at least two references who can speak to your previous evaluation work.
• A statement of interest responding to the points above and explaining how your qualifications and experience meet this call. The statement should also include a brief description of your proposed methodology for this scope of work and timeframe. The statement should be no longer than 1 page.