Closing date: Sunday, 15 March 2015

Vacancy code: VA/2015/B5002/7035

Position title: User Experience Specialist

Level: ICS-10

Department/office: GPSO, Water and Energy

Duty station: Paris, France

Contract type: International ICA

Contract level:IICA-2

Duration: 4 months

Application period:09-Mar-2015 to 16-Mar-2015

United Nations Core Values: Integrity, Professionalism, Respect for Diversity

Background Information - UNOPS

UNOPS mission is to serve people in need by expanding the ability of the United Nations, governments and other partners to manage projects, infrastructure and procurement in a sustainable and efficient manner.

Within these three core areas of expertise, UNOPS provides its partners with advisory, implementation and transactional services, with projects ranging from building schools and hospitals, to procuring goods and services and training local personnel. UNOPS works closely with governments and communities to ensure increased economic, social and environmental sustainability for the projects we support, with a focus on developing national capacity.

Working in some of the world's most challenging environments, our vision is to advance sustainable implementation practices in development, humanitarian and peacebuilding contexts, always satisfying or surpassing partner expectations.

We employ more than 6,000 personnel and on behalf of our partners create thousands more work opportunities in local communities. Through our headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark and a network of offices, we oversee activities in more than 80 countries.

Background Information - WEC

Water and Energy Cluster

Based in Copenhagen, the UNOPS Water and Energy Cluster provides specialized project management services to partners such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank. Together with partners, the cluster executes projects that support sustainable development by:

• promoting international cooperation to prevent and reverse environmental degradation of international water systems
• enhancing the resilience of communities and eco-systems to climate change
• lowering emissions by bridging renewable energy solutions
• developing Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions to strengthen climate-resilient development

Background Information - Job-specific

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short Lived Climate Pollutants ('the Coalition') is the first global effort to treat short-lived climate pollutants as an urgent and collective challenge. Launched in February 2012, the Coalition is encouraging rapid reductions in black carbon (or soot), methane and many hydrofluorocarbons to protect human health and the environment now, and to slow the rate of climate change within the first half of this century. The Coalition is a partnership of governments, intergovernmental organizations, and representatives of the private sector, the environmental community, and other members of civil society, that are committed to accelerating and incentivizing action to address key short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs).

The Coalition has a membership of more than 100 Partners as of 26 February 2015 and 11 approved initiatives for rapid implementation. UNEP is a Partner in the Coalition. UNEP also hosts the Secretariat and the Trust Fund of the Coalition in its Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) in Paris.

For more information, visit www.unep.org/ccac

Functional Responsibilities

The primary focus of the CCAC online communication in 2015 will be promotion of the CCAC activities aimed at extending the membership of the Coalition, scaling up its efforts to reduce SLCP emissions and building outreach and visibility to educate and inform primary target audiences and general public about the urgency and necessity to mitigate SLCP emissions and impact. Therefore redesign of a new official website is required to be used as a critical communication vehicle to increase awareness, inform and engage interested audiences by showcasing achieved results by the CCAC and its partners. It will also supply the Coalition Partners with required tools and information to successfully achieve goals at all operational levels and implement specific activities with long-term results.

For successful redesign of the CCAC website, the User Experience Specialist is needed to plan, research, test and design the structure of the site, in close collabration with the CCAC Secretariat and User Interface Designer, as well as Web Developer, in accordance to project stages detailed below.

Initial assessment, planning and research:

• Arrange and co-lead project planning meetings with all relevant parties
• Create a detailed timeline with all required steps to guide the site development process
• Identify CCAC website user groups, their needs and create user persona profiles representing real users
• Conduct intensive assessment of existing website structure and content in line with the user needs findings
• Research competitor websites with similar aims in order to identify most commonly used design patterns and approaches that are familiar to CCAC key stakeholders
• Analyse website performance and analytics to determine pitfalls in user pathways and technical deficiencies

User observations and testing:

• Design and conduct in-depth user interviews with the CCAC Secretariat staff and CCAC partners based on user scenarios
• Create experience maps for relevant user profiles, categorize observation and interview findings into painpoint categories and carry out ideation for website structure proposal
• Open and closed card sorting exercise design and analysis
• Creation of an exhaustive specification detailing structure and content of the new site in line with identified user needs and CCAC requirements

Layout prototyping:

• Lead and supervise User Interface Designer in creation of wireframes with all content elements that shows information grouping and position of different functional blocks on the site (maximum 35 in total)
• Working with User Interface Designer in development of an interactive prototype for mobile and desktop
• Consult and recommend the Secretariat about user group creation for prototype testing phase
• Conduct prototype testing with user groups
• Fine-tuning of layout and information structure on the site
• Create a website blueprint model that represents how the website will work to inform front and backend developers of the site

Assessment and monitoring:

• Provide support for the quality control during new site production phase to ensure best user experience practice is followed, including review of technical specifications and functionality
• Assess usability, accessibility and user interaction process and make recommendations to the Secretariat for future improvements and evolvment of the site
• Advise on User Interface design and web development execution, and liaise with the Graphic Designer to succesfully implement visual theming of of the site and its execution in frontend development phase.
• He/She will be expected to work closely with the User Interface Designer, Graphic Designer, Website Developer and the CCAC Secretariat to ensure the project .

Monitoring and Progress Controls:

• May 31: (1) Two interactive prototypes - for mobile and desktop using approved wireframe layouts; (2) recordings and observations from prototype testing; (3) Fine-tuned wireframe layouts and website structure; (4) Website blueprint model outlining user interaction needs to be implemented during development and production phase; (5) Notes from consultations with web developer and graphic designer;
• July 26: (1) quantitative evaluation of usability and interaction on the new site by click tale or user session monitoring to determine whether the new site meets user needs.
• The Advisor/Specialist is not expected to work in the Paris office.

Education

• Master's degree in IT and/or Psychology (preferred).First-level university degree in combination with two years qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience

• A minimum of five years in website development, user experience design or a related field.
• He/she should have excellent written and spoken communication skills, profound expertise in digital behaviour studies, technical knowledge of user interface design and web development implementation process and the capacity to work with colleagues and partners remotely.

Competencies

Skills

• Observance of principles and ethic codes of the United Nations
• Previous experience in user profile research
• Expertise in mobile design development
• Proficiency in usability testing, user interviews and observations
• Previous experience in creation of mobile-first prototypes and derived desktop prototyping
• Strong conceptualization ability and good visual communication ability
• Analytical skills and research competences in digital communication domain
• Strong working knowledge of HTML, CSS, Fireworks and associated design tools
• Understanding of common software development practices and technical knowledge of frontend development
• Understanding of common software project management practices
• Verbal skills and ability for effective communication
• Works collaboratively with other project team members to achieve project goals
• He/she should have the capacity to work in the team with the user interface designer, web developer, graphic designer and CCAC Secretariat in Paris, work under pressure, identify needed action items, set targets, define guidelines and produce above-mentioned outputs.

Languages

• For the post advertised, fluency in oral and written English is required.

Contract type, level and duration

Contract type: International ICA

Contract level: I-ICA 2

Contract duration: four months lumpsum

For more details about the ICA contractual modality, please follow this link:www.unops.org/english/Opportunities/job-opportunities/what-we-offer/Pages/Individual-Contractor-Agreements.aspx

Additional Considerations

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time (CET)
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• For staff positions UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns.

Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.

Application Information: https://gprs.unops.org/Pages/ViewVacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=7035