Design Research & Strategist

Position: Design Research & Experience Strategist
About the Role

We are seeking a Design Research & Experience Strategist to lead and grow our research practice while expanding the role of research across product, service, brand, consumer, medical, and digital experience opportunities.

The ideal candidate is a self-starter who can identify opportunities, build structure where ambiguity exists, and translate user understanding into actionable strategies that inform design, innovation, and business decisions.

What You'll Do

Research Leadership

* Lead design research initiatives including front-end discovery, contextual inquiry, ethnography, stakeholder interviews, concept evaluation, journey mapping, and opportunity framing.

* Develop research plans tailored to business questions, project phases, user populations, and client objectives.

* Establish and maintain research standards, templates, and best practices to ensure quality and consistency.

* Mentor researchers and cross-functional team members in research planning, fieldwork, synthesis, and insight communication.

Experience Strategy

* Translate research findings into strategic frameworks, experience principles, service concepts, product direction, and innovation roadmaps.

* Facilitate workshops that align stakeholders, define priorities, and move teams toward actionable outcomes.

* Identify opportunities to expand research into broader strategy engagements including service design, brand experience, and front-end innovation.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

* Build flexible project teams integrating Design Research, Industrial Design, Human Factors, UX/UI, Graphic Design, and Engineering.

* Train and guide team members to support research activities such as observation, synthesis, journey mapping, and insight translation.

* Foster a collaborative research culture that values rigor without creating silos.

Practice Growth & Business Development

* Partner with leadership to shape research and strategy offerings that respond to client needs and market opportunities.

* Support proposal development, project scoping, and client presentations.

* Help define and package offerings around design research, experience strategy, service design, and innovation strategy.

Required Qualifications

* 7+ years of experience in design research, experience strategy, service design, innovation strategy, or related fields.

* Strong knowledge of qualitative research methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, interviews, journey mapping, and concept evaluation.

* Demonstrated ability to translate research insights into actionable strategies, frameworks, and design principles.

* Experience managing, mentoring, or guiding researchers and cross-functional teams.

* Strong facilitation skills including client workshops and stakeholder alignment sessions.

* Excellent communication, storytelling, and presentation skills.

* Background in consulting, agency, product development, healthcare, consumer product, or innovation environments.

Preferred Qualifications

* Experience in medical device, healthcare, consumer product, digital product, or brand strategy.

* Familiarity with human factors, usability engineering, or regulated product development.

* Experience partnering with Industrial Design, Human Factors, UX/UI, Graphic Design, and Engineering teams.

* Ability to support business development through proposals, scoping, and client conversations.

* Experience building or evolving a design research practice.

* Comfort working across both strategic front-end ambiguity and tactical evaluative research.

What We're Looking For

The ideal candidate is a principal design research leader who has grown into experience strategy. You are comfortable working in ambiguity, confident leading clients and teams, and energized by building something larger than a single discipline. You balance research rigor with business pragmatism - knowing when deep research is required, when a lean approach is appropriate, and how to bring the right disciplines into the process.

* Self-starter with strong ownership and initiative

* Strategic thinker who can connect user insight to business value

* Collaborative leader who can integrate multiple disciplines

* Clear communicator and compelling storyteller

* Low ego, high standards