We hired!

We’ve got big ambitions, but we need help to actualize them. We’ve found some extraordinary folks to work with us as part of the Kudoz and Fifth Space prototypes. Read more about the kinds of roles that are part of prototyping teams – and stay tuned for our next round of recruitment in the Fall of 2015.

1. a Design Entrepreneur
2. an Embedded Journalist
3. a Learning Specialist
4. a Little Bit of Everything Fellow
5. a Design Fellow

In the next 6-months, we’re making, testing, and tweaking a new model for disability day services, called Kudoz. So individuals like Mark and staff like Jana aren’t so bored, so stuck, so lacking in developmental experiences. These are the kind of experiences that widen your interests and introduce you to people, places, things, and ideas you didn’t even know existed. When you’re a child, daycare is meant to enrich, stimulate, and introduce you to the world. When you’re an adult with a disability, day programs are meant to keep you safe. We’d like to change their function and their form. With your help.

But, we’re not stopping there.

In the next 6-months, we’re also experimenting with a new model for human resourcing, called The Fifth Space. So that jobs in the disability sector aren’t just about service delivery, but about discernment. About understanding what’s a good service for whom, and developing new interactions with users from the ground-up. The Fifth Space isn’t another user-centered design training or innovation toolkit. The Fifth Space is a different way of configuring roles and teams. So that ideas don’t just go up the line, and decisions don’t just come down the line.

To do all of this, we’ve got to construct a backbone team that’s way more than the sum of it’s parts. That’s got verve, grit, and stamina. That’s creatively combustive. Without all the melodrama.

You’ll be joining a burgeoning team. Some of us are introverted and serious. Others are extroverted and loud. Some moonlight as improvisational artists, balloon twisters, and song-writers (ok, really, that’s just Laura). Others trained as engineers, teachers, anthropologists, business analysts, museum curators, and graphic designers. What gets us all up in the morning is a deep desire to disrupt the status quo. All by making viable alternatives, not simply making recommendations.

What can you add to the mix?

Let’s start with an imperfect analogy. Imagine we are Pixar. Circa 1986. We’re a team with a huge vision. But, we’re missing John Lasseter (hired as an Interface Designer, and now The Creative Director) to help bring that vision to life. To invest in it. To shape it. To stick with it. Until it’s no longer just a vision. It’s grown, morphed, and become something significant.

As the Design Entrepreneur, you won’t just help us to co-design and prototype a new service, you’ll be helping us to anchor a local practice. A practice that flips the order of how most social services and policies are made. A practice that makes new social services and policies by blending design with anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy and tons of community outreach. A practice that measures the success of those services and policies in terms of changed lives.

Our aim is to embed this practice within the disability sector, and to build the organizational scaffolding and business model for bottom-up working in British Columbia. That means you’ll be coming on board to mold a start-up, and transition away from one-off projects. You’re up for the longevity required. You’ll be ready to go deep: applying your user-centered design skills to a particular user group (youth, adults, and families with a developmental disability). You’ll be ready to go wide: applying your user-centered design skills to everything from human resourcing to accounting. And most of all, you’ll be ready to problem-solve through all the stuff you don’t yet know and cannot possibly predict.

Download the full role description here

Here’s one of our biggest challenges: How do we enable folks to see and to feel our process in real-time? The logic? The emotion? The nuance? The tenseness? The texture? And how do we do so in a way that isn’t self-promotional? But honestly sheds light on the ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’ of grounded change?

Help us make our way through this challenge by coming on board as our very first Embedded Journalist. This is a brand new function within the team.

We’re looking to develop our own documentation methodology. Part reality show, part narrative feature, part investigative journalism. We’re looking to experiment with modality: short films, web TV series, podcasts. We’re looking to process, package and publish new content as we go. And we’re looking to user test this content so we can better shift our audience’s thinking and practice.

Who is our audience? Folks with a vested interest in social services. Whether as practitioners, policymakers, reformers, or recipients.

You might not know much about this audience, but you will know how to spot, elicit, and tell a great story. And not in a trendy, TED talk-kind of way. We’re not after a formulaic approach. We’re after something that feels emergent and raw.

You’re the kind of person, then, that loves to experiment with formats. With how words, images, and sounds come together. You’re able to do a bit of everything: researching, script-writing, filming, editing, producing. Your portfolio is the picture of versatile. You’ve got a track record successfully pitching and producing pieces for a range of platforms. You work quickly, and seek out feedback early and often.

Download the full role description here

Tim doesn’t speak. He prefers to pace. Mark understands what you’re saying, but finds it hard to form words. Fay loves to talk, but sometimes struggles to comprehend. 

Tim, Mark and Fay are just 3 of the folks we are working with to develop Kudoz: splendid 1:1 learning experiences in the community for individuals and families with intellectual disabilities.

We’ve been able to catalyze hundreds of novel activities in the community. Hosted by small business owners, freelancers, community living staff, and individuals themselves. Everything from mushroom picking to gravy making to roof building. But, how do we turn these activities into meaningful learning experiences? Experiences that expand people’s sense of self?

That’s where you come in. As a Learning Specialist, you’ll help us to shape experiences so they work for young people and adults with very different learning needs. That might mean helping us to operationalize the latest educational research; creating bespoke materials; training & coaching the hosts of experiences; and designing debriefing sessions.

You’ll have worked with folks who have both ‘mild’ and ‘severe’ learning difficulties. But you are critical of the labels we slap onto people, and the standard educational assessment tools. You like to look at learning from a cognitive, psychological, and social perspective. You’re ready to experiment with different practice, and have heaps of ideas about alternative learning environments, prompting tools, and ways of chunking information. You exemplify lifelong learning.

Download the full role description here

We’re an international start-up launching another local start-up. So, there’s lots to do. Every day brings a new challenge. Whether it’s sourcing cheap furniture for a new space, creating a file structure for Dropbox, or coordinating pop-up events across multiple agencies, we think even the most every day tasks can be done a bit differently.

That’s why we’re looking for ‘a little bit of everything fellow’ to help us design routines, systems, and ways of organizing ourselves that are fit for our purposes. Indeed, we want to be as intentional with our internal work flow as we are with our external facing work product.

You might still be in school, fresh out of school, or seeking a career change. You love making order out of chaos – but you hate rigidity and bureaucracy. You enjoy coming up with structures and systems – but get bored doing the same thing day after day. You’re not flustered by a long to-do list, and thrive off of random tasks. You can think on your feet, and are awesome at sourcing seemingly obscure stuff or cold-calling to find hidden opportunities. A closed door just makes you more curious and persistent.

Download the full role description here

Part of our mission is to put prototyping into the water supply of three disability service providers in British Columbia.

We do not believe prototyping should just be the domain of designers. But we do believe designers can model how to shift from talking to making; from recommending to testing; from abstracted ideals to concrete touchpoints.

That’s why we are looking to build a network of designers to model their making skills. In exchange, we’ll teach you how to make interactions that prompt measurable change with and for folks most on the margins.

You will have trained as a service designer, a product designer, an industrial designer, an interaction designer, or a graphic designer. You are passionate about using design to do good in the world, only you are increasingly skeptical about what ‘good’ really means. You sense that yet another app won’t be enough to move the dial on sticky social challenges. You’ve got a bit of experience applying design to social challenges. But, you’d like to better understand what social means. You’re the kind of person who would spend a Saturday at the library browsing books on subjects you don’t yet know much about, but soon will.

Download the full role description here

Download each job description above for instructions on how to apply. In short: we’re asking for a purpose statement (in any format you choose) plus an annotated portfolio.

We want to fill positions by the end of January 2015. Please send your materials to [email protected] by midnight on 21 January.

You can also forward us the name of someone superb and we’ll send them a surprise package.

Email us with any questions! We like question-askers.