External Opportunity - Human Centred Design Consultant

Job Title: Human Centred Design Consultant

Application Deadline: 7 October 2025 @ 11:59 p.m. CET

Applications can be submitted here.

Contract Period: 3 Months

Expected time allocation: 50% (around 75H/month)

Expected Start date: October 2025

Background

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from healthcare. These programmes are run through five operational centres. The Manson Unit in MSF UK and the MSF Sweden Innovation Unit (SIU) in MSF Sweden support the operational centres through innovation and research projects with the aim to improve MSF operations.

Assessment of current need

The Inclusive Innovation team, a joint initiative with the Manson Unit and Sweden Innovation Unit, supports MSF staff to explore, develop and test innovative new approaches to challenges faced in our projects, to ultimately give people better access to medical care.

Human Centred Design support

We are looking for Human-Centred Design (HCD) Consultant to provide innovation teams with support on design and participatory methodologies and approaches. The consultant will contribute to the process of defining challenge(s), as well as designing and testing solutions. This will be done by providing support and/or training to innovation facilitators as well as local teams.

Objectives

The consultancy requires responsibility for identifying and developing appropriate (for the context and potential constraints of the projects) design approaches to build on the initial research and ideation phase of these projects. Projects/locations are not yet identified so this is a generic engagement and locations/team supported may vary.

Expected Results/Outcomes:

• The projects team will have been led through the initial project life cycle including, but not limited to, synthesizing existing research efforts, planning and co-facilitating design workshops and trainings with project staff and other project stakeholders, supporting design of research activities, ideation, and early-stage prototyping.
• Insights highlighted from existing research carried out by the project to develop best-fit HCD approaches.
• Ideation sessions conducted with multidisciplinary groups, including project representatives, stakeholders, and technical experts to develop initial prototypes.
• The management of rapid testing and iteration of prototypes in the field to develop and finalise 1-2 concepts for the project to pilot.
• Present results to stakeholders in a concise manner at different stages of the process.

Activities and deliverables

• Method/tools identification
• Adaptation/development of tools/methods
• Preparation
• Facilitation, training and support
• Data collections, categorization and analysis
• Synthesis of data/insights/learnings
• Documentation

More project and context specific deliverables will be agreed on within a ToR once projects have been selected/identified.

Profile of consultant:

Essential:

• Demonstrable experience in human-centred design.
• A bachelor’s degree (master’s degree preferred) in design, public health, international development, social sciences, or relevant field.
• Strong project management skills and experience including, but not limited to, developing work-plans and budgets, budget management, delivering on time and within set budget.
• Proven skills in using an HCD approach in lower- and middle-income settings.
• Experience working in public health, NGOs and/or the social sector.
• Leader of teams of other designers and (ideally) non-designers in an HCD process.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Experience working with local staff whose main language is not English, or French.
• Working knowledge of Miro or equivalent software.
• Previous experience in building local skills and team development.
• Ability to convey complex information, clearly and concisely to a wide range of audiences.
• Working in humanitarian contexts.

Desirable:

• MSF (or equivalent) experience.
• French language ability.
• Experience working with communities’ and/or peer support groups.
• Working proficiency of Microsoft 365 environment (Teams, SharePoint, etc.).

How to apply

In your application, we ask you to submit:

1. CV and motivation letter
2. Examples of previous work – provide a summary of similar work that you have developed and delivered before.
3. Hourly rate and NGO discount if applicable.

Deadline: 7 October 2025 (midnight CET)

To submit your application or if you have any questions email natalie.oconnell@stockholm.msf.org

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