User Design Advisor

Focus of the Role

Are you passionate about the possibilities of transforming government, public services, and economies through the power of technology? Do you have experience consulting or working with senior political leaders and government in the tech sector, driving systemic and transformative change? 

At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), we work at the highest levels of government to help leaders go further and faster to make their citizens’ lives better. Moving the dial on the great global challenges of our time requires engaged, focused, and motivated leaders.  When political leadership is relentlessly deployed, at the highest levels, incredible things can be achieved. Using our distinctive expertise and global outlook, our expert advisors and embedded teams advise governments all over the world in strategy, policy and delivery, underpinned by technology.

Job Introduction

TBI’s growing technology transformation advisory offer and The Tomorrow Partnership supports senior political leaders to harness the power of the technological revolution for national transformation across sectors including health, government services, digital identity, agriculture, education, and climate.  It is supported by cutting-edge insights from our Technology Public Policy team and through collaboration with leading players in the global technology space.

To support a growing portfolio of work in digital government across Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and beyond, TBI is seeking a User Design Advisor, to join our central team supporting TBI country teams and senior political leaders harnessing digital and technology transformation to improve government and public services.

The role of User Design Advisor offers the unique opportunity to support TBI’s tech transformation work across the global portfolio you will advise our country teams in the application of user design principles and directly support and contribute to improving key documents for initiative design and delivery. Given our focus, the user in question is largely the citizen, as well as those across government where process and behaviour change need to be part of the design from the outset. This work is envisioned to be internally and externally facing and will require direct collaboration with government client counterparts and technology partner companies with whom TBI is working to design and deliver initiatives. In other instances, you will need to advise and equip TBI country teams to engage stakeholders on UX/CX requirements. As such, an ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and partners is crucial and a willingness to travel globally is required.  

When not directly supporting initiative design and delivery in partnership with country teams, you will work with other specialists in our Global Client Solutions Team, which houses our tech and sectoral expertise, to continuously improve our offers, tools, and frameworks and contribute to knowledge creation and learning culture around user and citizen experience in technology transformation for public good.

This role requires an exceptional candidate who brings breadth of experience in government technology and digital transformation, advisory on user-design projects, and an understanding of progressive policy. The ideal candidate brings strong people and communication skills, and a stop at nothing attitude to support the growth and ambition of this programme. You’re a calculated risk taker, a true team player, a practical optimist, and believe in the power of technology to transform the world for equitable good.

Key Responsibilities

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­The key responsibilities of this role will include:

• Use evidence- and context-based design to support TBI country teams (Country Heads, Heads of Tech and their teams) in the integration and application of user design requirements in initiative design from initial scoping through to start-up
• Build user/citizen-centred practices in TBI teams and government clients to improve initiative design and delivery
• Develop guidance and best practices that help teams understand user experience and design to ensure initiatives designed and technology solutions selected keep the user and citizen at the centre of design and delivery  
• In collaboration with Country Teams, Global Innovation Unit, Global Client Solutions Tech team, and technology partners, support improved design, prototyping, and piloting of relevant solutions to solve government priority challenges
• In collaboration with the GIU team, drive Client Services provision of prototyping, either outcomes or programmes by understanding synergies and parameters
• Align user research activities with wider sectoral offers and ensure TBI’s technology offers to governments meet the needs of end users
• As required, travel to countries to provide deep dive support to Country Teams and their governments at critical junctions of design and development that would benefit from your UX lens
• Advise leadership on the UX considerations or challenges experienced in our initiatives to improve programme design and product requirements

Person Specification

The successful candidate should demonstrate the following:

• Experience as an advisor or project manager in a consulting firm, foundation/NGO, or private sector organisation with significant experience in user experience design and research
• Experience helping organisations understand the diversity of users of government services and building inclusive practices that deliver accessible digital services; experience advising senior political leaders and government teams delivering digital transformation is a plus
• Experience with international development, public sector advisory, and technology for development contexts highly desired
• Demonstratable strength in agile project management, structured problem solving, top-down communication, and portfolio thinking
• Excellent communication skills, from executive office and ministerial levels through to technical level, and who is adept at speaking to senior leadership, knows how to navigate ambiguous environments and is comfortable at managing up and beyond hierarchy  
• Ability to distil complex insights into easily usable formats to translate user experience principles to a wide variety of stakeholders
• Direct experience working in LMIC’s is highly desired and strong cross cultural communication skills required
• Experience in working in entrepreneurial and matrixed environments and who is comfortable working in ambiguity while closely collaborating with global functional and geographic teams
• Who commits to business objectives and pulls out the stops to make sure they are always met 
• Relevant language skills for TBIs regions of work is a bonus (French, Portuguese, Balkan languages, Bahasa, etc)

#LI-Onsite

About The Institute

The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) is a mission-driven not for profit organisation. We exist to equip political leaders and governments to build open, inclusive and prosperous societies. We work hard, every day, to make a difference. When governments work well they are able to create economic and social change in a way that promotes fairness, social justice and opportunity. We work relentlessly to support leader and governments with the challenges they face. Giving them practical solutions and actionable insights, that once implemented, can be transformative for their people  

We do this within two connected divisions: 

 Government Advisory 

Our Government Advisory teams work directly with political leaders and governments around the world to implement reforms that improve the lives of their citizens. It works with a variety of partners and its outputs cover a range of disciplines and projects across countries in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia.

 Policy Futures 

Our Policy Futures work encompasses three broad areas: 

• Renewing the Centre: developing a bold and innovative domestic policy programme to help renew the centre ground of British politics; 
• Tech and Public Policy: exploring the policy challenges and opportunities presented by the technological revolution; and 
• Extremism Policy Unit: creating solutions designed to tackle the threat of extremist ideologies in the UK and around the world. 

As an organisation, the core beliefs we all embrace are: 

• Open and Progressive: you’ll believe in the value of teamwork 
• Bold and Pragmatic: you’ll approach everything you do with integrity and authenticity 
• Optimistic Changemaker: you’ll be focused on results 

TBI believes embracing diversity and inclusion make us a better place to work.  It’s our goal to reflect everyone in society and we actively welcome applications from individuals and groups who are under-represented in the workplace. We celebrate difference be it ethnicity, religion, age, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. We will only ever assess you on your abilities and fit for a role. We’re happy to discuss any adjustments you need to ensure a level playing field during recruitment and, if you\'re successful, discuss any adjustments you might need to thrive in your role.