The ‘Sust’ project (as ‘I Didn’t Buy’ is now called) has received funding from the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute to extend its research concerning a digital platform for empowering consumers to shop sustainably. The team includes Chris Preist and Fiona Spotswood (UoB) and Tim Kindberg (matter II media). In a recent project we carried out user research and built a prototype for providing consumers with information related to the sustainability of products and brands as they shop online. This new project will focus on Fashion. It will investigate potential mechanisms by which the platform will enable users to crowd-source information about Fashion products’ and brands’ sustainability, and the mechanisms by which the integrity of that information can be assured against low-quality inputs, trolling, manipulation etc. We will be working with Fashion Revolution’s global network of activists to co-create the mechanisms.
We are recruiting a research assistant for 30 days, starting late May / early June 2022. The RA will conduct qualitative research, through interviews and/or workshops with potential users and other stakeholders. The work will ideally be at least 3 days/week at several points. We expect it to last at least two months; the end date is negotiable.
The research assistant will be supervised by Fiona Spotswood and will work with Tim Kindberg on a day-to-day basis.
Duties
The successful applicant will be required to carry out the following tasks:
- Background research into relevant research methods and comparable crowd-sourcing functionality in other digital platforms
- Helping design the methods by which the project will engage with its global users (in English) in order to understand their needs and co-create the crowd-sourcing functionality
- Supporting the team in carrying out these methods via online engagement with the project’s users: interviews and exercises in ideation, experimentation, testing etc.
- Capturing all data from these activities
- Coding the data
Requirements
The successful candidate will possess skills and experience as follows:
- A PhD, or undertaking a PhD, in a relevant topic
- Experience in user engagement, preferably in participatory research and/or design methods.
- Good practical skills in online engagement and capturing data from it
- Experience in coding data
- Sufficient technical skills for installing a web browser extension and helping others to do so
Preferably, the RA will have a strong interest in sustainability.
Remuneration
The successful candidate will work under contract to matter II media for 30 days at a day rate of £140.78. Total pay: £4223.25.
Applications – DEADLINE EXTENDED
Send a cover letter and CV to sust@matter2media.com by 5pm, 30 May 2022.