Foresight Researcher

Job Description

Location London

Reporting to Design Futures Team Lead

Working hours Full time (9day Fortnight companywide)

Contract type/duration Permanent

Band: 2.2

Salary: £41,000 to £50,000 (Dependent on office location and proven ability)

Closing date 3rd December 2024

Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport and place leadership. We are a Centre of Excellence for urban innovation and mobility with a role to catalyse the innovation market in the UK and globally. Our teams provide world-class innovation as a service to support the development of new products and services that enable cities, organisations and businesses to generate new ideas, test concepts and develop new solutions for the UK and beyond.

The Human Connected Design (HCD) directorate at Connected Places Catapult is responsible for the strategic use of design, supporting the Catapult in its mission to help grow businesses, build the UK economy and service the creation of truly connected places. The directorate examines the relationships between people and planet and puts a healthy future at the heart of innovations and technologies that we help to design and build. We are made up of three highly collaborative and creative teams: Human Insights, Connected Design and Design Futures. The three teams include experts in user research, service design, psychology, design futures, sociology, and human factors.

Design Futures

The Design Futures Team:

1. Conducts trends research for use across Connected Places Catapult projects and programmes

1. Visions possible futures in the context of innovation imperatives – human experience, connected intelligence, and climate action

1. Uses futures approaches to mature discussion and design of strategy informed by trade-offs and co-benefits between plausible futures

1. Develops roadmaps and contingency plans for probable futures

1. Works with others with relevant skills to create forecasting models to project the future under specific assumptions

1. Uses participatory design to build worlds that elicit feelings and discussion about preferred futures

The Catapult is an innovation accelerator – we ask the question: innovating towards what? ...and suggest how we might get there.

Purpose of the role

We are seeking a Foresight Researcher capable of creating, presenting, and provocative evidence in a rigorous and collaborative way. In this role, you will deliver projects that unlock UK innovation and safeguard against market failures. In addition to the skills and responsibilities below, this role offers a unique opportunity to shape the newly formed Design Futures team and develop seminal artifacts through research, creative writing, and illustration.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with multidisciplinary teams of experts in the fields of design, engineering, data science and software development and housing and urban development, to deliver a portfolio of complex projects

• Produce content for reports and future scenarios for expert and non-expert audience as a curious, well-rounded researcher also responsible for layout and visual communication

• Structure and write reports and future scenarios appropriate for public publication

• Facilitate interviews, focus groups, and workshops with high profile stakeholders

• Use systems thinking to understand context, stakeholders, challenges, opportunities, tensions, and trade-offs

• Contribute key trends research by gathering signals, deducing key drivers of change, and visualising findings for periodic release

• Help to showcase Design Futures projects by capturing and communicating project methods and outputs as visual artifacts

• Knowledge management; literature reviews, organisational propositions, contractor capabilities, exemplary futures studies etc

• You may be required to undertake any other reasonable duties to support the Catapult in achieving its strategic outcomes and ensure effective business operations

Requirements

Required skills and experience

• Demonstrable experience working in one or more of the following domains – transportation, built environment, climate action - in a creative, analytical, or commercial capacity

• Familiarity with multiple forms of primary and secondary research and the ability to communicate insights visually

• Experience in designing, facilitating, and synthesising workshops, both virtual and in person

• Affinity for either creative or technical writing

• Values generative conversations to play with ideas and is equally enthusiastic to focus on deep independent work, that is - the ability to diverge energetically and converge diligently

• Likes to embrace ambiguity, initiate discovery, and synthesise effectively and concisely

• Ability to think critically about trade-offs as well as co-benefits with a propensity to use frameworks and metaphors to communicate new ideas, especially in communicating paradoxes and dichotomies

• Ability to find and understand or create and communicate useful frameworks to structure and communicate thinking

• Growth mindset, courage, and initiative to take on new and foreign challenges

• Flexible, with ability to contribute to multiple projects at the same time and pick up new skills and capabilities as required for different projects

• Collaborative approach to working with the ability to take ownership of small and large tasks

• Self-motivated with attention to detail and an eye for aesthetic

• Visual communicator confident using design tools and software (in the team we mostly use InDesign, Illustrator, photoshop, anything else is a bonus.

Desirable:

• Master's Degree or equivalent opportunity to explore theoretical concepts, including evidence of rigorous self-study. We are looking for strong theoretical knowledge and the ability to apply it to practical scenarios.

• Desire to foster T-Shape profile by continuing to deepen core knowledge while exploring and connecting disparate bodies of knowledge, such as economics, sociology, anthropology, circular design, systems thinking et al.

• Broad interest in foresight disciplines, including Strategic Foresight, forecasting and stochastic modeling

• Global perspective with keen interest in history and international events; professional, academic, or other first-hand experience abroad is a plus

• An understanding of the UK and European collaborative R&D ecosystem would be advantageous

• Applied experience using foresight techniques

Benefits

• 9 day fortnight for everyone, we have a full company shutdown every other Friday.
• 23.5 holiday entitlement for everyone, with pro-rata calculations for part-time employees, along with a Christmas shutdown period for additional days off.
• Competitive pension, up to 10% company contribution to help you save for your future.
• Two paid days of volunteering leave per year (pro-rata for part-time employees) to support charitable activities.
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) providing 24/7 confidential work/life support services to you and your immediate family members.
• Cycle to Work Scheme encouraging a healthy and sustainable commute.
• Cash Health Plan, offering reimbursement for a wide range of essential and everyday healthcare expenses, promoting your well-being.
• Payroll Giving scheme, allowing regular charitable contributions from pre-tax income, maximizing the impact of your donations.
• Discounts and offers from a wide variety of retailers, enhancing your purchasing power and providing savings opportunities.
• Mortgage Advice benefit, delivered in partnership with Charles Cameron & Associates – provides employees with free, expert mortgage advice and end-to-end mortgage support from the application process through to completion.

Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. We strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, colour, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy status, sex, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, or any other characteristics protected by law. We also make all reasonable accommodations to meet our obligations under laws protecting the rights of the disabled.