Fellow - User Experience Research​/Design

Position: Fellow - User Experience Research / Design
We Make Life More Rewarding and Dignified

Location:
Libertyville
Department:
Research & Development

Summary:

This role for a Fellow level research and design leader who wants to shape that capability from the ground up. You will help define how Hollister discovers future opportunities in intimate health: how we listen, how we observe, how we frame problems, how we test early ideas, and how human insight informs investment decisions.

You will join a newly formed New Ventures group within R&D. The group exists to explore opportunities beyond today's product roadmap and to build a credible pipeline of future solutions.

Your role is to ensure those opportunities start from human truth, not internal assumptions, technology enthusiasm, or incremental product thinking.

It is a strategic, front-end role for someone who can help shape what problems the company should solve. This is not a downstream usability role. You will not inherit a mature playbook but will help create one. The work will require craft, judgment, courage, and the ability to bring others with you as the organization builds a stronger external orientation.

Responsibilities:

Define the real human problems worth solving

• Lead discovery work that goes beyond stated needs. Understand routines, workarounds, stigma, fear, confidence, privacy, dependence, dignity, and the emotional weight of living with intimate health conditions.

Shape future opportunity spaces

• Partner with the New Ventures leader to translate broad strategic themes into clear, evidence-based problem spaces and venture theses. Your work should help the organization decide where to explore, what to stop, and what deserves deeper investment.

Build the research and insight capability for New Ventures

• Establish practical standards for how early-stage opportunities are explored: how questions are framed, how research is planned, how evidence is captured, how insights are synthesized, and how decisions are made to enable better strategic choices.

Translate insight into design and venture direction

• Convert human insight into experience principles, design criteria, concept territories, early value propositions, and decision recommendations. Your work should make ideas sharper, more grounded, and easier to act on.

Challenge assumptions constructively

• Use evidence to pressure-test internal beliefs, inherited category logic, premature solution bias, and concepts that sound attractive but do not meaningfully improve people's lives. This role requires the judgment to know when to support, when to reframe, and when to say: we are solving the wrong problem.

Connect human insight to technology and clinical reality

• Work closely with Technology Architects, Clinical Development, marketers, engineers, designers, external partners, and business leaders. Help ensure technology exploration is anchored in real human needs and that early concepts are desirable, usable, feasible, and strategically meaningful.

• Establish the New Ventures research operating model: question framing, research planning, synthesis, evidence standards, and decision outputs.
• Lead deep discovery in 2-3 priority opportunity spaces tied to intimate health and future growth.
• Create a practical problem-framing toolkit that helps teams move from broad themes to precise human problems.
• Build a living insight base from patients, caregivers, clinicians, and adjacent stakeholders.
• Shape key venture decisions: advance, pivot, stop, or reframe.
• Establish a strong working rhythm with the New Ventures leader, Technology Architects, Clinical Development, and selected external partners.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Science or Engineering
• Advanced Degree Preferred
• 12+ years in UX research, design research, human-centered design, design strategy, service design, or adjacent disciplines.
• Deep experience in healthcare, medical devices, life sciences, or other high-sensitivity human contexts.
• Experience working with sensitive, private, emotional, or stigmatized topics.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional teams through evidence, synthesis, and judgment.
• Experience shaping early concepts and opportunity spaces, not only validating mature products.
• Exposure to regulated product development and human factors/usability work is strongly preferred.

Competencies:

• Strategic problem framing: sees beyond stated needs and defines the real problem worth solving.
• Research craft: selects the right method for the question; rigorous without being academic.
• Synthesis and judgment: turns messy human data into clear implications and decisions.
• Design translation: connects insight to concepts, experience principles, design criteria, and venture direction.
• Influence without authority: challenges senior stakeholders constructively and changes minds.
• Sensitive-context research: earns trust in conversations about private, emotional, or stigmatized health issues.
• Enterprise communication: communicates human insight simply, vividly, and with consequence.

Mindset and Behaviors:

• Deeply…