Human Centered Design Consultant at Mercy Corps

Scope of Work:

Under the direction of the AgriFin Program Technical teams, the consultant will be responsible for the following key activities:

1. Partnerships and Product Roadmaps: In collaboration with the Technical Team members the consultant will be tasked to review product and solution roadmaps to identify opportunities for improvements to address the needs of Women Small Scale Producers and Women led Small and Micro Enterprises.
2. Go to market and route to market strategies: The consultant shall be required to review the partner GTM and RTM strategies to ensure they address the targeted women segments.
3. Lead and/or collaborate with the process and design approach of the initiatives, implementing Human-Centered Design best practices throughout.
4. Create and collaborate on HCD hypotheses, metrics, frameworks, and data collection tools, for engagements with selected partners.
5. Align partner approaches with documented HCD research outputs on digital financial inclusion for women segments.
6. Support learning documents including but not limited to case studies, articles and blogs on engagement implementation findings and overall impact of the projects.
7. Identify opportunities for further HCD research to support selected partners product roll out and support the development of Scopes of Work for onward contracting.

This project implementation shall be fully consultative with key stakeholders and all learning outputs will be developed in close coordination with AgriFin program and related partners to ensure recommendations and final learning outputs remain strategically aligned the program strategy.

Required Qualifications:

1. 8+ years of professional experience in human-centred design, working for a design agency or in a design or product management role
2. Experience conducting ethnographic research in peri-urban and rural areas in East and West Africa
3. Experience in facilitating co-creative and collaborative processes that create safe spaces for people to openly share their experiences and learnings
4. Experience in designing digital financial solutions for people in peri-urban and rural areas.
5. Expertise in proposal writing is a plus.
6. Demonstrated strong management, coordination, teamwork and planning skills.
7. Familiarity with Mercy Corps systems is a plus.
8. Excellent communication skills (written interpersonal and presentation skills in English and a proven ability to establish and maintain professional relationships.
9. Ability to offer coaching, mentorship and development of technical capacity.
10. Local country geographical knowledge is a plus