Rotterdam, Netherlands
Design strategist
at Het Nieuwe Instituut
Het Nieuwe Instituut is seeking a design straegist to join its team in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Het Nieuwe Instituut is looking for a multidisciplinary designer/design team for the design strategy of an innovative online platform for accessing heritage.
Making the collection usable and visible to a wide audience, Het Nieuwe Instituut launched the six-year disclosing architecture programme in 2019. The national collection for Dutch architecture and urban planning contains a wealth of stories and knowledge that can be unlocked in innovative ways, thanks to the high-quality digitisation of photos and design drawings. How will the future online user of the collection find, discover, experience, adapt or process these stories?
To answer this question, Het Nieuwe Instituut is looking for a designer or design team capable of developing a design strategy for an innovative online platform for accessing heritage materials.
Do you have a unique vision of the future of heritage access, and do you have extensive experience of advising on design assignments at a conceptual and strategic level? Can you perfectly match the user experience (UX/UI) with the right target group and associated behavioural profiles? Then we look forward to receiving a presentation from you – before 11 April 2021 – in which you present yourself and your team as our new design partner.
You are free to choose the form of your presentation, but we are especially interested in:
- your vision on opening up cultural heritage
- your vision on innovative digital platforms
- one or more reference projects
- an introduction to yourself/your team
What you bring to the table:
- experience in conceptual and strategic advice regarding design assignments
- specialised in UX/UI issues
- affinity with, and vision of, heritage access
- demonstrable knowledge of, or affinity with, innovative access to large data collections
- experience with AI, generous interfaces and multidisciplinary knowledge access is recommended
- willingness to commit yourself to Het Nieuwe Instituut for a period of several years
- ability to collaborate with various other designers and technical partners
Context
The collection contains a multitude of materials and sources, sometimes in a very fragile condition. Within the framework of the multi-year disclosing architecture programme, a considerable part will be conserved, restored and digitised in the coming years. This will contribute to the broader objectives of the programme: to make the collection more sustainable, usable and visible. Within this context, the other interface will also be developed over the coming years. In addition to the search portal, which is mainly designed for archival research, Het Nieuwe Instituut also aims to serve other target groups.
The questions we want to answer in the near future are: Which interfaces or windows can we offer for which audiences? How do these windows relate to each other? How do the various online platforms, such as the website, the search portal and the newly developed platform the other interface, relate to each other and to the great diversity of target groups and behavioural profiles? How do the different elements form a “stack” of components that reinforce each other?
In the development of the other interface, two central communities or user groups are distinguished. On the one hand, an engaged cultural audience that does not necessarily have background knowledge, but does have an open, interested attitude towards design (heritage), and on the other, designers, artists, thinkers, researchers, curators and other practitioners who work professionally in the culture and heritage sector in its broadest sense.
We develop interfaces for these target groups that meet different behavioural profiles. The other interface focuses explicitly on discovering the collection(s) instead of targeted (re)searching. To this end, the project uses innovative techniques such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, linked open data and a headless digital infrastructure that connects multiple sources.
The behavioural profiles that we expect to encounter among the main target groups are:
- investigations: active search for heritage material, archival research. This is already possible via the search portal
- discover: be surprised by heritage material, associate freely
- search differently: search for heritage material with different purposes and via different characteristics (shape, colour, type)
- experience: active experience of heritage material, guided tours, VR
- leading and being guided: translating stories with heritage, being led by the hand through history
- Remix: reuse of heritage material
Procedure
A shortlist of entrants will be compiled by the selection committee. The selected designers/teams will be invited to further explain their vision in a meeting.
Good commissioning is an important point of attention for Het Nieuwe Instituut. For that reason, this request has emphatically not been framed as a pitch. Respondents are therefore not expected to provide ready-made solutions. A presentation on your vision of innovation, digital platforms and heritage access is appreciated.
Diversity or multivocality is a starting point and guiding principle for Het Nieuwe Instituut. Employees and partners of the institute are encouraged to be themselves, also in their work. Personal viewpoints, ideas and factors such as culture, gender (expression), disability, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, theoretical or practical education and age do not stand in the way of fulfilling their function. This means that different voices are heard, recognised and celebrated and that different identities can co-exist. In that light, we are also open and curious about forms of (embodied) knowledge and (lived) experience that are created and propagated outside established educational institutions and knowledge institutes.
Entries can be sent before 11 April 2021 to Het Nieuwe Instituut, FAO Gijs Broos, disclosing architecture programme manager, via email. You may also contact him with any questions you have.
The selection committee consists of: Cathy Brickwood, digital programme manager; Gijs Broos, disclosing architecture programme manager; Eline de Graaf, curator; Mark van Hoorn, ICT information manager; Maureen Mooren, head of design; and Jaap Stronks, digital marketing and communication consultant.