Senior Design Researcher- Contractor (Part-Time, Hybrid, Chicago)

About: New America Chicago is a nonpartisan policy innovation lab and local hub of New America. Based at The Chicago Community Trust, we tackle challenges facing Illinois communities and partner with New America’s DC teams to shape federal and regional policy recommendations grounded in lived experience. Through our CivicSpace initiative we engage community members most impacted by policies in designing better solutions for low- to moderate-income communities.

We seek an experienced design researcher to help support a five-month sprint from June to November, with opportunities for other projects in the future.

CivicSpace, in partnership with the Law Center for Better Housing (LCBH), the Future of Land and Housing (FLH) at New America proposes to co-design a community-informed pre-eviction system that identifies and assists vulnerable tenants before an eviction is filed. Rather than waiting for court filings, this project will engage residents in neighborhoods with the highest eviction rates to design a new model of coordinated support that takes a “whole wallet” approach, addressing rent, benefits access, food assistance, healthcare continuity, and other financial pressures together.

The project will conduct community co-design sessions in up to six neighborhoods, work with frontline providers and government agencies including the Illinois Office to Prevent and End Homelessness (OPEH) and the City of Chicago Department of Housing, and develop testable prototypes for earlier, more integrated intervention pathways. If successful, the model would reduce eviction filings, improve benefits enrollment and retention, and create a replicable framework for upstream eviction prevention that can be adopted across the city and county.

Primary Function: The senior design researcher will provide project management and design research support to this multi-organization team. The contractor must be a strong project manager, as they will be asked to develop a project plan, and then assign tasks and manage output from a 7-10 member team to keep the project on a tight timeline. The contractor will be the linchpin in this fast-moving project. While the design researcher will conduct a substantial amount of the research, they will not be expected to conduct all aspects of the project. The design researcher will also coordinate the contributions of a team of subject matter experts, sociologists, technologists, government staff, and policy researchers. 

Responsibilities:

• Oversee junior staff to conduct background research on existing eviction prevention programs in Chicago and around the country, as well as other research related to the needs and behaviors of the target populations.
• Develop project plan and meet regularly with the team to ensure project is on a tight schedule.
• Work with staff lead to assign tasks and responsibilities to staff members from the partner organizations.
• Work with the team to develop agenda and materials to be used in community co-design sessions.
• Co-lead sessions with staff members. Staff will conduct resident recruitment.
• Coordinate and collaborate with staff team to collect, analyze, and synthesize data.
• Develop a journey map in consultation with partner organizations and stakeholders and a preferred journey map based on community member input.
• Work with staff to collect feedback on existing and proposed service delivery model from stakeholders, as well as identify existing resources and needed resources and policy elements to support the new service delivery approach.
• Develop testing for 2-3 small elements of the preferred service delivery design that can reasonably be implemented with two to three partner agencies during the sprint.
• Collect data from tests and develop recommendations for a new service delivery model.
• Support staff as needed on developing policy agenda to support implementation.

Qualifications:

• Educational training and 7+ years of experience as a designer.
• Experienced in design research, with a particular emphasis on service delivery design and testing.
• Very strong project management skills, able to develop plans, coordinate large, diverse teams, and deliver results on tight timelines.
• Skilled at respecting and listening to community members, especially in low-income or vulnerable groups, and drawing lessons from co-design sessions.
• Proven ability to identify pragmatic testing strategies, as well as design, lead, and draw concrete recommendations from the testing process.
• Skilled at collaborating with diverse stakeholders, including community organizations, community members, government agencies, researchers, and service providers.
• Ideally, background in housing policy, social services, or economic mobility