Trase Product Designer

Trase is an independent science-based initiative with the goal of empowering a just transition towards more sustainable systems of production, trade and consumption of commodities that are driving the majority of deforestation worldwide. To achieve this, Trase’s mission is to drive a step-change in the transparency and understanding of commodity trade by providing the data, tools and actionable intelligence for companies, governments and civil society organisations to take practical steps to address deforestation.

Central to Trase’s offering is a set of open data products available through https://trase.earth/ detailing supply chain connections and exposure to deforestation, emissions and other impacts of individual trading companies and import markets for many of the main commodity sectors linked to tropical deforestation, including soy, beef and palm oil. We are constantly evolving our data products to accommodate changes in the data landscape and meet evolving user needs, with an increasing investment in geospatial intelligence and global trade analyses complementing our deep-dive work in specific sectors. In addition to data products we also produce targeted analyses on barriers and opportunities facing sustainable commodity trade and provide strategic advice to governments, industry and civil society coalitions.

The Trase team 

The Trase team is made up of over 35 individuals, located in nine countries, brought together by enthusiasm, curiosity and drive to deliver on our mission. Our multinational and multidisciplinary team brings a diversity of perspectives, experiences and expertise that is essential for us to deliver on our mission. We strive to create an inclusive, dynamic and fun environment where team members and partners are individually and collectively empowered.

Description of the position

Trase is looking to contract a Product Designer for 12-months to help make our product offering more impactful, compelling and responsive. Are you a product designer with a passion for crafting intuitive and impactful user experiences? Do you excel at translating user needs into innovative product solutions? Are you passionate about contributing to Trase´s mission? If so, we invite you to work with us as a Product Designer and play a pivotal role in developing products that can deliver lasting positive impact on the sustainability of commodity trade.

Required skills and experience

• User research: Experience conducting user research to understand their needs, pain points, and motivations.
• UX and visual design: Experience with developing exceptional UX and visual designs for websites. Strong experience with developing prototypes and iterative design for user-facing tools and websites.
• Tools: Proficient in using Figma to create and prototype user interfaces.
• Ways of working: Demonstrated ability to work in collaboration with interdisciplinary teams and cross-functional stakeholders to define user interface requirements.

Desirable skills and experience

• Data-Driven Designer: Experience designing data-heavy websites and interfaces, such as dashboards, reports, and maps.
• Interest in work-area: Passion for sustainability, climate tech, or open data
• Accessibility Advocate: Understanding of accessibility best practices for web design, ensuring inclusive experiences for all users.
• Compelling communicator and storyteller: Effectively communicate design decisions and influence your team and users.
• Understanding of HTML and CSS standards and best practices is desirable.

Role and responsibilities

Trase launched its new website (https://trase.earth/) in January 2024 and we are looking to make continuous improvements on the site and our individual data products for the rest of the year. This role fills an important gap in the product team which currently has a product manager, frontend developer and a backend data engineer – working alongside a wider data and innovation team. We are looking for somebody to lead the product design responsibilities in the team and be an advocate for our users, while helping to critically judge the success of our products against user-focused outcomes.

The main responsibility of this role is to lead on all product design work by discovering user insights, turning them into designs for testing and preparing implementable high-fidelity designs for development.

Core responsibilities (75%)

• Continuous user research

With recent work in reforming the product vision and strategy, Trase is moving towards having a more defined user experience. As part of this, we are providing users with varied but curated access to our data and intelligence. This change in approach resulted in a re-design of the user journey on trase.earth, which ultimately led to a new website. We are now using the new website as a foundation and improving user journeys we see are the most effective in delivering value to our users. You will work with Trase´s team to identify unmet needs and user pain points, and lead research on user experience, as well as ongoing concept and prototype testing work. User research work also includes engaging with Trase´s partners and internal team who both use and distribute Trase´s products. User feedback feeds directly into Trase’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning system to inform prioritization of impact pathways.

• Implementing, testing and iterating ongoing UX/UI improvements

Linked to user research, once we identify and prioritise specific pages or user flows, we envision the product designer to own the process of turning insights into effective design, that can then be tested with users and iterated on.

Additional responsibilities (25%)

• Collaboration and communication

We expect the product designer to collaborate with product managers, engineers, visual designers, and other stakeholders to effectively communicate design ideas. This may involve presentations, explaining design decisions, incorporating improvement suggestions, and advocating for user needs throughout product development.

• Setting up standard practices

As the first ever product designer, we expect this role to play an active role in setting up standard practices and ways of working, based on common approaches. We also expect the product designer to contribute to development of product strategy, ways of working and other resources as needed.

Contract details

• 200+ days over 12-months, full-time (35 hours a week)
• Fully remote: Ability to join meetings in GMT and GMT+1 and GMT-3, timezones will be a plus.
• Start date is as soon as possible, or by arrangement.
• Invoicing will be monthly.
• The consultant will be responsible for any in-country taxes and fees.