Job Description

The Manager – CX/UX Research & Design is responsible for leading the strategic planning, execution, and operational governance of user experience research across Bupa’s digital sales channels (Ecommerce). This role drives deep customer understanding through qualitative and quantitative research, shaping personas, journeys, and usability insights that guide product and design decisions. In addition to research leadership, the role provides experience-level oversight of UX/UI design outputs, ensuring alignment with business goals, usability standards, and brand consistency. Collaborating closely with product, CX, design, IT, and performance teams, the UX Research Manager ensures that every customer journey is rooted in user needs, optimized for ease and engagement, and delivered with measurable impact on satisfaction, retention, and conversion.

Key Accountabilities

1- Customer & User Research Strategy & Roadmap

Develop and maintain an annual and quarterly research strategy aligned with business goals, product roadmaps, and experience initiatives.
Identify key customer journey touch points that require insight for optimization.
Prioritize research initiatives based on impact, urgency, and resource availability.
Collaborate with CX, product, UX, and analytics teams to align research with critical decision-making needs.
Maintain a centralized research calendar shared across departments.

2- Research Execution, Persona Development & Journey Mapping

Conduct and manage end-to-end qualitative research studies, including user interviews, contextual inquiries, diary studies, ethnography, and focus groups.
Design and launch quantitative research such as large-scale surveys, preference testing, and task completion self-assessments.
Define clear research objectives, hypotheses, and success criteria for each study.
Prepare screeners, consent forms, discussion guides, and post-session templates based on standardized methods.
Synthesize findings into actionable insights, using frameworks such as affinity diagrams, empathy maps, and experience themes.
Develop and maintain data-backed user personas segmented by behavior, needs, and goals.
Create customer journey maps that identify moments of friction, opportunity, and emotional experience across touchpoints.

3- Usability Testing & Concept Validation

Plan and facilitate usability tests across wireframes, interactive prototypes, and live digital experiences.
Define test goals, task flows, success metrics (e.g., task completion rate, error rate, SUS score), and participant criteria.
Run moderated (remote or in-person) and unmoderated testing using internal tools or third-party platforms
Evaluate UX elements including information architecture, content comprehension, navigation logic, and layout responsiveness.
Track behavioral friction points: hesitation, repeat actions, confusion, and drop-off in task flows.
Collaborate with UX Designers and Product Owners to prioritize usability findings for iteration.
Provide clear, visual reporting of usability issues, videos, task analytics, and design recommendations.
Maintain benchmark scores for UX metrics (SUS, time-on-task, task success rate, etc.) and improve them over time.

4- UX Research Operations & Vendor Management

Develop and maintain research templates: briefs, consent forms, scripts, analysis frameworks.
Create a research repository or system to archive past studies, insights, and raw data.
Define SLAs for study turnaround, recruitment lead time, and report delivery.
Manage relationships with research agencies or freelancers.
Ensure quality assurance of vendor-delivered research activities.

5- Experience Design Governance & Direction

Define and maintain UX/UI design principles and experience standards aligned with the company’s CX strategy and brand identity.
Provide strategic direction for experience design — ensuring that user journeys, wireframes, and interactions deliver simplicity, clarity, and user value.
Review and provide feedback on early design concepts, ensuring they align with user insights, accessibility guidelines, and experience goals.
Create and evolve high-level wireframes or experience maps to guide early-stage discussions or handover to the design team.
Act as a bridge between research insights and design decisions, translating findings into clear experience principles.

6- UX/UI Collaboration & Implementation Oversight

Collaborate closely with UX/UI designers (internal or IT vendors) to ensure design outputs meet business requirements, research insights, and usability goals.
Facilitate experience alignment meetings between business, research, and UI designers to clarify flows, journeys, and pain points.
Support the design team with high-level sketches or annotated screens as needed to articulate the desired outcome.
Review and sign off on key experience flows, wireframes, and prototypes before they move into development.
Ensure UI designers apply the correct UX principles and interface guidelines (spacing, hierarchy, navigation, interactions).
Coordinate with IT or product teams to resolve any design feasibility challenges without compromising the intended experience.
Advocate for consistency across all digital touchpoints, ensuring a unified look and feel even if different teams own different parts.

Skills

4-7 years of progressive experience in UX research, customer insight, or human-cantered design,
Strong ability to empathize with users and translate user motivations, pain points, and needs into research-driven strategies.
Proven expertise in qualitative and quantitative UX research methodologies: user interviews, usability testing, diary studies, surveys, journey mapping, and persona development.
Proficiency with UX research tools such as UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, Maze, Dovetail, Lookback, or similar.
Familiarity with behavioural analytics tools like Hotjar, UXCam, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, with ability to interpret their output for experience-level insight (in partnership with analytics teams).
Experience overseeing usability testing programs and applying insights into wireframes or experience design requirements.
Ability to provide strategic experience-level direction and feedback to UX/UI designers and collaborate across cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality design outcomes.
Demonstrated ability to manage external research vendors/agencies, including quality oversight, SLA management, and deliverable review.
Strong storytelling, stakeholder management, and presentation skills — able to influence design and product decisions with clear, compelling insights.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills with attention to detail, clarity, and structure.
Ability to govern UX research operations including templates, processes, repositories, and documentation standards.
Demonstrated leadership in bridging UX research with design implementation, collaborating with UI designers without taking on production work.
Track record of translating research into high-level experience design guidance and improving end-to-end digital journeys.
Creative, thoughtful mindset with ability to challenge assumptions and introduce innovative approaches to experience research.
Adept at working in agile, cross-functional environments with UX, product, business, and engineering teams.

E-Commerce Research & Design