Terms of Reference UI/UX Researcher (Individual Consultant) September 2024

Girl Effect

Unspecified

New

Today

Top Line Objective:

Girl Effect Nigeria is looking to procure the services of a UI/UX Researcher who will serve as support and additional capacity in the Experience Design practice at Girl Effect over the six months. You will be designing and prototyping analogue and increasingly digital experiences with human-centered insights and needs at their core. You'll be inspired by how technology can unlock new possibilities and choices for our audiences and imagine new uses for technology to address access, literacy, security, and other barriers.

Who We Are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media that girls want, trust and need. From chatbots to chat shows and TV dramas to tech, our content helps adolescent girls in Africa and Asia make choices and changes in their lives. We create safe spaces for girls, sharing facts and answering questions about health, nutrition, education, and relationships, empowering girls with the skills to negotiate and redefine what they are told is possible "for a girl".

Our reach is 50 million and counting, and we use technology to reach girls at scale so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, health, learning and livelihood.

Because when a girl unlocks her power to make different choices that change her life, it inspires others to do so too. She starts a ripple effect that impacts her family, community, and country.

That's the Girl Effect.

The Brand

Girl Effect uses a branded media approach towards delivering behavioral change programmes.

We reach girls across the world, where they are - online and offline, to support them at the critical moments in life when choices around their health, education and economic future need to be made.

We use our expertise in behavior change science to motivate and equip girls with information and support to help them see a different future for themselves, act on those choices, and drive greater demand for the opportunities and services available to them.

Chhaa Jaa in India, Tujibebe in Tanzania, Yegna in Ethiopia, Wazzii in Kenya - are some of our youth brands. They exist across multiple channels - digital ( Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, Whatsapp), TV, radio, print and offline. Together, these brands reach 50m people in 20 countries in Africa and Asia.

Our Approach

Girl Effect reaches girls where they are via multiple media programs

Girl Effect operates multiple media programs, including TV shows, radio dramas, magazines, hotlines, digital and social media content. We also operate a suite of digital products, including chatbots, websites and content Apps. Our target audience, adolescent girls and young women worldwide, are now using digital products and social media like never before. Access is managed through a mix of lo-fi and hi-fi devices ranging from feature phones, smartphones, and tablets to laptops. To ensure that our programmes reach girls effectively and efficiently in this complicated maze of media consumption, we focus on reaching them where they

Girl Effect in Nigeria

Girl Effect's goal is to inspire over 10 million girls and young women in Nigeria to defy gender norms and take control of their futures. Girl Effect has been piloting different approaches to change in Nigeria for the last ten years.

In 2014, we developed a mobile platform that trains young women to become technology-enabled girl ambassadors to conduct peer-to-peer research in some of the hardest-to-reach communities in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, and Kano states. In 2014, we launched a zero-rated online mobile platform—available on the web and social media—called Springster. Providing entertaining content written by girls, for girls, Springster gave users access to an a-z of everything they needed to know to thrive — in English and Hausa. We learned we can use digital channels to engage girls at scale in Nigeria and that there's a real thirst for honest, authentic content related to topics that girls are too scared to talk to their friends and family about.

In 2021, we partnered with Meta to use Instagram and Facebook to deliver social behaviour change communication campaigns designed to tackle myths around Covid and the Covid vaccine, working with influencers like Taaooma and Kate Henshaw to break through the clutter to reach more than 9m people.

Our aim over the next few years is to launch a youth brand in Nigeria, creating sustainable impact at scale and build scalable and long-lasting impact for girls and their communities in Nigeria.

What You'll Do

The objective is to support the design for new experiences by creating innovative solutions for a wide variety of product design challenges ensuring they align with the organization's behavior change goals and target audience needs. The designer will be expected to apply Human Centered Design thinking and approach not just within products, but also across the wider product ecosystem at Girl Effect and the complicated user journeys from product to product as well.

This consultant will conduct design sprints, consolidate outputs of design sessions, and support the running of feature prioritization sessions. They will also conduct prototyping activities collaboratively with a cohort of young people and other stakeholders across products such as chatbots, mobile applications, and brand websites, among others related to upcoming and existing products.

In this role, you should be an analytical and creative designer who can grasp user needs and solve problems. A strong portfolio of successful UX and other technical projects is essential. The engagement will start from Sept 2024 to February 2025.

UX Analysis:

• Devise and conduct a consultation plan with key stakeholders and target audiences including questionnaires, focus groups or interviews.
• Conduct a thorough assessment of the current UX design, identifying usability challenges, and opportunities for improvement.
• Create user personas and scenarios to guide the design improvements based on user needs and goals.
• Conduct concept and usability testing in the field with users
• Provide a detailed report summarizing the findings, including prioritized recommendations for UX enhancements to stakeholders and developers.
• Work with data to optimize and enhance products.
• Own and conduct design reviews with data, engineering and content teams to ensure a successful deployment with an appropriate go-ahead.

UI Enhancement:

• Utilize the insights from the UX analysis to redesign and enhance the visual appearance of the web platform's user interface.
• Define interaction models, UI components, and navigation structures to optimize user engagement and facilitate information discovery.
• Incorporate interactive elements to enhance usability and convey complex concepts effectively.
• Develop wireframes, interactive prototypes, and mockups to illustrate proposed UI changes.
• Implement modern design principles, including responsiveness, consistency, and visual hierarchy, while aligning with our brand identity.
• Ensure the new UI design elements fit seamlessly into the existing platform's technical framework, ensuring a consistent and cohesive user experience across all website components.
• Collaborate with Designers and Developers to create intuitive, user-friendly software to ensure that the updated UI maintains or improves the platform's overall performance and loading speed.
• Support UI content creation as and when required.

Who You Are

Skills, expertise, and requirements:

• You must be based in Nigeria and can travel within the country.
• Strong language skills in speaking, writing, presenting, and reading in English Language. Any other Nigerian languages or dialects are a bonus.
• 4+ years of professional experience in a design consultancy or equivalent position collaborating with multidisciplinary teams
• Fluency in the human-centered design process from qualitative research and synthesis to ideation, prototyping, and implementation.
• Service Design, UX, UI - Proficiency in wireframing and design tools such as Invision, Figma, Miro etc.
• You are solution-focused and medium-agnostic, willing to step out of your core skill set or discipline to find the correct solution to a design challenge.
• You have cultural sensitivity, creativity, and resourcefulness—comfortable finding your way through.
• You deliver precise and effective written and verbal communication to convey ideas, instructions, and feedback to team members, girls and young women.

Highly Desirable

• Experience in health-related content/Behavior change content production in the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Economic Empowerment would be a massive bonus.
• Experience in Conversational Interfaces such as Chatbots
• Basic Understanding/development of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning
• Cross-cultural design experience and/or working in design for ICT4D
• Experience working in emerging markets.
• Experience collaborating with in-house and third-party developers in agile sprints, stewarding the transfer of design to development.
• Familiarity with tools such as Google Suite, Asana and Slack is a bonus.

Attitudes we are looking for:

• Comfortable with complex organizational structures and multiple stakeholders
• Comfortable with shared decision-making
• A 'do-er thinker'
• Enthusiastic about talking to and interacting with people across cultures and geographies - this role will require extensive conversations, presentations, documentation and fire-fighting
• Highly empathetic and context-sensitive - able to balance conflicting needs and priorities decisively
• Mission-driven and cares about making a difference in the lives of young people and vulnerable sections of society.

Expected Commitment

• The assignment will take approximately six months to complete.
• Depending on the programme's needs, the consultant may be required to work 15- 20 hours each week on this assignment.
• The consultant's assignment period is from September 2024 to February 2025.

Location

The consultant must be based and have extensive experience in Nigeria. The Assignment is to be carried out in Nigeria.

Management

The consultant will have a primary point of contact with Girl Effect, Nigeria's Create Lead supported by the wider Create team - particularly the global Experience Design Lead. The language of the materials and reports shall be English. The contract supervisor shall approve all deliverables submitted by the consultant before any payment is made.

Tentative Timelines

• Terms of reference published: 4 September 2024
• Bid Submission Deadline: 18 September 2024
• Supplier selection, contracting, and briefing: End of September
• Project commencement: October

Proposal Submission

Interested consultants are asked to submit the following to support their candidature (Max 10 pages):

• Your understanding of the brief and why you feel you are well-placed to advise us on this
• Credentials/Profile/CV - Please showcase any previous work that you consider relevant to what we are trying to achieve and how we approach our work, and the audience we cater to. Describe the qualifications, experience, and capabilities of the firm or consultant in providing the requested services.
• Reference- Provide at least three references for similar contracts with a description of the service provided, the value of the contract, and the contract periods of performance.
• Breakdown of Costs with applicable taxes and other charges clearly identified in Naira. Consultants should provide their daily or hourly billing rate or their proposed fixed fee for the requested deliverables.. All applicable taxes should be quoted separately.

In their proposal, the bidder must demonstrate an understanding of the requirements described in the TOR and demonstrate how the bidder will meet the requirements of the evaluation criteria.

GE is not liable for any cost incurred during the award/contract preparation, submission, or negotiation of the award/contract. All submitted documentation and/or materials shall become and remain the property of GE.

VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for 90 days from the date of bid closure.

Evaluation Criteria

The criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are listed below:

Technical Evaluation

• Interpretation and understanding of this TOR-10%
• Relevant experience as demonstrated by CV/Profile - 20%
• Technical UI/UX deliverable execution experience - 20%
• Geographical Experience in Nigeria-10%
• Evidence of a minimum of three contactable references - 10%

Financial Evaluation

• Value for money/proposed budget breakdown - 30%

How to Apply

Please submit proposals, as described above, to suppliers@girleffect.org by 18th September 2024. Please clearly mark your email with the subject 'Nigeria UI/UX Researcher.'

Tax

Girl Effect Nigeria is obliged by the Nigerian tax authorities to withhold taxes on service contract fees and ensure other taxes are charged where applicable. Applicants are advised to ensure that they have a clear understanding of their tax position regarding provisions of Nigerian tax legislation when developing their proposals.

Copyright

All materials/documents arising from this consultancy work shall remain the property of Girl Effect.

Disclaimer

GE Nigeria reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party. GEEI shall inform ONLY successful applicant(s). The process of negotiation and signing of the contract with the successful applicant(s) will follow.

Please note: We will evaluate only proposals submitted following the application process outlined in the TOR and using our specified email address (suppliers@girleffect.org).

Safeguarding

You may be required to undertake safeguarding checks. Shortlisted consultants will be assessed on our organizational values at the interview stage, and the successful consultant will be expected to adhere to our safeguarding policy. We encourage you to read and understand our safeguarding policy, the executive summary of which can be found here. We have zero-tolerance for all forms of violence against children, beneficiaries and staff.

Equal Opportunities

Girl Effect Services is committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

We are committed to building an organization that is increasingly representative of, and works extensively with, the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to procuring consultancy service organizations and individuals with diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.