[Hiring] User Experience Review and Redesign Recommendations @Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Role Description

APF Canada is seeking a qualified UX consultant or firm to conduct an independent, evidence-based review of asiapacific.ca and to deliver clear, prioritized, and implementable recommendations for modernizing the site’s structure, usability, and visual design – without diminishing the visibility of our core research outputs, programs, and networks. This engagement is a strategic re-design engagement. It is not an implementation contract.

Objectives

• Understand our audiences.
• Establish who actually uses asiapacific.ca, what they come for, and where the current experience fails them – grounded in analytics and primary user research, not assumption.
• Simplify the information architecture.
• Recommend a navigation and content taxonomy that is intelligible to a first-time visitor while still surfacing the full breadth of our research, programs, and networks.
• Make our research findable.
• Recommend search, filtering, and browsing patterns appropriate to a large and growing publications archive.
• Modernize the visual design.
• Recommend a contemporary, credible, distinctly APF Canada visual direction appropriate to a national policy institution – clean, readable, and confident rather than decorative.
• Clarify the digital ecosystem.
• Advise on the relationship between asiapacific.ca and our satellite properties.

Timeline

• RFP issued: October 22, 2026
• Deadline for written questions: November 2, 2026
• Answers posted to all proponents: November 6, 2026
• Proposals due: November 23, 2026, 5:00 p.m. PT
• Anticipated engagement duration: 14–18 weeks from kickoff.

Budget

• The total budget for this engagement is not to exceed C$30,000, inclusive of all professional fees, participant incentives, software and research tool costs, travel, and applicable taxes.
• Proponents must provide a detailed cost breakdown by phase and by deliverable.
• Identify which elements they would recommend prioritizing and price optional components separately if the objectives cannot be fully met within this budget.

Proposal Requirements

• Proposals must not exceed 20 pages excluding appendices, CVs, and portfolio samples, and must include:
• Cover letter (1 page) – primary contact, firm overview, and a statement of interest.
• Understanding of the assignment – your reading of APF Canada’s challenge, based on your own review of asiapacific.ca.
• Proposed approach and methodology – including research methods, participant recruitment strategy, and how you will balance modernization against preservation of our core content.
• Work plan and schedule – phases, milestones, deliverables, and dependencies.
• Team – named individuals, roles, time allocation, and relevant experience.
• Relevant experience – three comparable projects, ideally involving content-heavy, research-driven, mission-based, bilingual, or public-sector organizations.
• Portfolio – samples demonstrating both research rigour and design quality.
• Bilingual and accessibility capability – describe your French-language research capacity and your accessibility expertise.
• Detailed budget – as described in Section 5.
• Assumptions, exclusions, and requirements of APF Canada.

Submission Instructions

• Submit proposals as a single PDF to [email protected] with the subject line “APFC-2026-UX-01 – [Proponent Name]” no later than November 23, 2026, 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
• Late submissions will not be considered.
• Written questions may be submitted to the same address until November 2, 2026.

Contact

Michael Roberts, Communications Director, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, [email protected]