MT1016 SDF Design Agency - Provision of design capabilities and services

Tender description

Summary of the work Smart Data Foundry at the University of Edinburgh require an experienced Scottish design agency to undertake design/UX/UI work for their customer portal and website. Expected Contract Length 2 Years Latest start date Monday 16 January 2023 Budget Range Estimated that the work can be delivered within the budget range of £48000 to £53000 per year. Why the Work is Being Done Smart Data Foundry (SDF) is a mission-led and data-driven organisation to inspire financial innovation and unlock the positive power of financial data to improve people's lives. The current missions we are working towards are: Stop the Squeeze to help communities and small businesses with the cost-of-living crisis; Inspiring Financial Innovation by using data to inspire and accelerate Financial Innovation; and Countering Climate Change to help the world halt and counter climate change. In order to deliver on these missions, SDF is looking to develop a portal to deliver products and services to end customers, which may include financial institutions, academics, regulators and fintech. Problem to Be Solved Currently, SDF does not have the means to deliver products, particularly data products (e.g., datasets), to end customers. The development of the SDF portal will allow customers to log in and access SDF's products and services in many forms (e.g., downloading datasets, viewing dashboards, viewing the Technical Standards Library materials, accessing data via simple rest APIs). There has been significant back-end development of the portal, however design work needs to be done to ensure that use of the portal is an easy and enjoyable experience for the customer and that there is a seamless flow between the main SDF website and the portal and its associated products. The design agency will be required to deliver the following working within a quarterly planning cycle: o Portal design defining the user experience and look and feel of the portal o Ensure a coherent and seamless customer journey and onboarding between the customer-facing SDF website and the Portal o Delivering iteratively based on SDF priorities, user needs and fuelled by user research (jobs to be done, customer journeys, etc.) o Provide support and guidance to SDF engineering teams in the implementation of the portal design Who Are the Users SDF portal to give access to our missions-aligned data products and services for our audiences(academic researchers, fintech, financial institutions and regulators). For example, as an academic I need to access real data to research economic trends. As a fintech(PM, data scientist)I need to access synthetic data sets to test my ideas and propositions for desirability/feasibility/viability without the worry of compromising data privacy and security. As a regulator I want to test solutions to problems such as fraud or money laundering by modelling solutions using synthetic data. SDF are progressing our customer portal, a logged-in part of the SDF website to give access to our missions-aligned data products and services for our audiences providing secure access to: o High-quality synthetic datasets to let anyone test and experiment safely without the risk of breaching data privacy and security(full access and taster sample) o Data environments to give access to data analysis tools o Library of Open Banking/Finance standards o Original research (i.e. research papers and reports such as Bankers for Net Zero report https://smartdatafoundry.com/news/bankers-for-net-zero-report-release or Older Workers, Later Lives report https://smartdatafoundry.com/news/older-workers-later-lives-report) o Dashboards (data visualisations)for access to the most updated, accurate data and POV(pdf)of reports for access to more digestible high-level summaries. Work Already Done Extensive technical work has been already carried out in the past year laying out foundations for the portal including: - Overall domain model - Database and data pipeline - Product model - Security model Existing Team The existing team consists of two developers (one senior back end, one full stack), a quality engineer, a product manager, a user researcher, a content strategist and a project manager/scrum master. We are also hiring an engineering lead, a DevOps engineer and a junior developer. Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • Demonstrable skills and experience in UI/UX design, design strategy and delivery. Please provide use cases of similar projects. • Experience designing websites that are aligned with business objectives. • Experience designing customer portals that are aligned with business objectives • Experience planning and creating seamless user journeys. • Experience iterating design work based on user and stakeholder feedback • Technical understanding of website development • Technical understanding of platform development • Demonstrate understanding of the target customer markets and sectors (fintech, financial institutions, academics, government/regulators) • Ability to integrate with SDF agile working patterns Nice to Haves • Use of sustainable design principles to priorities environmental considerations (i.e. reuse back end systems). • Experience designing websites that exceed customers' expectations. • Experience designing customer portals that exceed customers' expectations. Work Location Smart Data Foundry, 4th Floor, Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh, EH8 9BT Working Arrangments The supplier will work in an agile fashion with the SDFportal team, working in sprints to align with the development cycles of the team. This is likely to take the repetitive cadence of one initial design/UX sprint which the supplier is directly involved in,followed by a period of sprints during which the SDF developers build out and implement the designs. During implementation period,the supplier should be on hand to provide any support that the SDF team may require to build out the designs. The supplier will need to be able to meet in-person with the SDFteam in Edinburgh as required. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Provide a detailed response on how you will achieve the project requirements. (15%) • Provide examples of how you meet the required skills and experience. (10%) • Present a case study which best demonstrates how you are best suited for the proposed project. (15%) • Additional Assessment - Shortlisted Interviews - An expansion on written proposals w/c 14th or 21st of November  TBC (20%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Provide a written submission which demonstrates how the supplier fulfills the following 3 cultural fit criteria. (10%) • Ability to embed within the agile tech team at SDF, working closely with the product manager to understand the product vision, roadmap and taking part in sprint planning,demos and retrospectives. • Ability to work as a team with our organisations. Including integrating with our working arrangements such as in person meetings in Edinburgh when required. • We require a supplier which aligns with our values of thoughtful and conscientious design, be content and customer experience driven and highly collaborative at heart. • Additional Assessment - Shortlisted Interviews - An expansion on written proposals w/c 14th or 21st of November TBC (10%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is this opportunity only open to companies registered in Scotland? No. 2. How can you request only Scottish application and comply with Great Britain’s Equality Act? We are not limiting applications to Scottish applications only. 3. How much work has been completed in defining the audience personas, their needs and goals, user journeys, and mapping them to the functionality? Or is this a requirement? There has been limited work completed in these areas, but research is being undertaken within SDF regarding audience personas, needs and goals. It is expected that we’d work in partnership with the design agency to work on seamless customer journeys. 4. Is there any current data to suggest mobile/desktop usage ratio? Based on the nature of the offerings, this is expected to be a desktop first solution with limited mobile usage. 5. Is user testing required as part of the scope? User testing is not required as part of this brief at the current time. SDF will lead on user engagement. 6. Has accessibility design been factored into the brief – this is something we would highly recommend. Accessibility should be considered as part of all design work - our aim is to factor this into wider design and usability testing materials and discussions as we go. 7. Has a design system been developed for the existing site – Is there appetite to discuss its creation? We have a set of existing design patterns from the agency that developed our brand and website, so the portal and potential website redesign will need to largely follow these. 8. Can you kindly confirm what tool you use to sprint plan/track? Sprint planning and tracking is done using the Kanban capabilities in Monday.com.