Director of Product Design & Strategy

Join our dynamic and innovative team as the Director of Product Design & Strategy, where you will play a crucial role in crafting customer-facing digital properties. This is your opportunity to lead transformative experience strategies that improve user happiness and drive business results.

In this role, you will collaborate with Product Owners, Service Designers, Product Designers, Content Designers, and User Researchers in a creative and inclusive environment that champions emotional intelligence and user-centered design. You will hav e the chance to solve sophisticated challenges with business leaders by developing strategic frameworks and providing insights that elevate our digital properties to new heights. Your work will directly chip in to our mission of reshaping the industry and making our customers lives better.

We are looking for visionary design strategists who are enthusiastic about creating seamless user experiences that delight customers. If you thrive in a collaborative setting and are eager to push the boundaries of experience strategy, we invite you to apply and be a part of our exciting journey.

Position Responsibilities:

• Experience Strategy:Define and be responsible for the strategic direction for user experiences across multiple products, ensuring consistency and alignment with the organizational vision.
• Strategic Vision: Set the vision and strategic direction for UX/UI design within a suite of products or a line of business, driving excellence in product design.
• Strategic Workshop Leadership: Lead strategic workshops that address sophisticated challenges, driving alignment and decision-making at senior levels.
• Workshop Design & Facilitation:Develop frameworks and methodologies for workshop design and facilitation, mentoring teams to ensure impactful and productive sessions.
• Team Mentorship and Development: Mentor and develop the design team, fostering standard methodologies and a user-centered design culture.
• Collaborate with Product Owners:Work closely with Product Owners to balance product and user needs, providing actionable insights that drive strategic decisions.
• Holistic Experience Design:Create and maintain a cohesive vision for the user experience across all touchpoints, ensuring consistency and alignment with business goals.
• Research and Roadmap Integration: Be responsible for the use of design exploration, user testing, and research to advise and drive the product roadmap, experience improvements, and prioritization.
• Enhance User Satisfaction:Boost user satisfaction and streamline service delivery by creating detailed user personas, journey maps, and service blueprints to map the path of customer interaction and engagement.
• Data-Driven Strategy:Advocate a user-centered approach by using data from user tests, analytics, and A/B tests to drive strategic decisions.
• Maintain Consistency:Develop and maintain comprehensive strategic frameworks to ensure consistency and reliability across projects.
• Communicate Insights:Distill research data and communicate insights effectively to cross-functional teams, including product, engineering, content, and research.
• Innovative Practices:Continuously update your knowledge of next-generation user experiences and emerging technologies, chipping into the development of innovative strategic practices.
• Visionary Solutions:Establish and articulate the vision for new solutions, ensuring they resonate with user needs and expectations.
• Framework and Methodology Development: Develop frameworks and methodologies for workshop design and facilitation, mentoring teams to ensure impactful and productive sessions.
• Design System Oversight: Be responsible for the adoption and continuous improvement of the design system, ensuring it remains relevant and effective for product designers
• Inclusive Design Advocacy: Champion the integration of inclusive design practices within the design system, fostering a culture of accessibility and diversity.
• Accessibility Integration: Champion the integration of accessibility criteria across all design projects, promoting inclusive design practices.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: Minimum of 10-15 years of experience in experience strategy or related fields.
• Education: A bachelor's degree in design, Visual Communications, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Psychology, or a related field is required. A master's degree in design Strategy, Service Design, Behavioral Science, or a related discipline is strongly preferred. Equivalent proven experience demonstrating strategic design leadership and cross-functional collaboration may be considered in lieu of formal education.
• Technical Skills: Proficiency in strategic tools such as UserTesting.com, Mural, Figma and Adobe Creative Suite (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, XD) for visual communication and prototyping. Strong understanding of user experience (UX) principles. Familiarity with web standards (W3C and Section 508) and front-end development standard methodologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Portfolio: A strong portfolio highlighting a range of strategic pro jects that illustrates your process, your level of craft, and the results you have successfully launched are crucial.
• Advocate for Strategic Excellence:Leverages research insights to advise and drive strategic decisions, whether creating visionary, forward-thinking concepts, or practical, immediately implementable solutions.
• Leadership:Demonstrated experience in leading and mentoring for strategic projects and teams, including collaboration with cross-functional teams like engineering and product management.
• Accessibility Expertise:Demonstrated experience with accessibility guidelines and standards, including WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act).
• Proven History:Demonstrated experience in delivering successful strategic projects that have driven impactful design decisions.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration:Experience working in a sophisticated, cross-functional organization, preferably in an enterprise environment or digital agency.
• Human-Centered Design:High proficiency in human-centered design principles, usability, and accessibility.
• End-to-End Strategic Process:Deep understanding of the end-to-end strategic process, including user validation, user flows, content modeling, wireframing, prototyping, user testing, and high-fidelity visuals.
• Critical Thinking:Excellent critical thinking skills and the ability to conceptualize strategic frameworks from scratch.
• Communication Skills:Persuasive communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to articulate strategic insights to both designers and non-designers.
• Leadership:Demonstrated ability to lead and prioritize multiple work streams in a time-sensitive environment.
• Technical Familiarity:Familiarity with technical constraints and limitations for designing across digital platforms such as desktop and mobile (Android and iOS).
• Agile Approaches:Must have familiarity with agile, iterative approaches focused on business and adoption outcomes to bring digital customer experiences to market quickly with the ability to release frequently and validate continuously.

When you join our team:

.We'll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
.We'll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
.As part of our global team, we'll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit .

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact .