This position is incentive eligible.
At HCA Healthcare, our Digital Transformation and Innovation (DT&I) team is redefining what’s possible inpatient care. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, automation, and digital technologies, DT&I is helping drive meaningful improvements in clinical outcomes, reduce manual workload, and expand the reach of our care teams. If you're passionate about using technology to improve human life, this is where your work truly matters
The Director of Design Research reports directly to the VP of Design and leads a human-centered discovery practice within DT&I, focused on understanding real workflows, user behavior, operational friction, and opportunities for measurable improvement.
This role brings together the strengths of user research, ethnography, workflow understanding, and process excellence to support a modern discovery model grounded in real-world observation, product strategy, and experience measurement.
Working in close partnership with designers, this leader guides discovery across product and operational initiatives, collaborating with Product, Operations, Value Tracking, Change Management, Innovation Hub, and business partners. The Director helps teams move from assumptions to evidence by observing how people actually work, identifying where friction occurs, and translating human interactions, behaviors, and pain points into clear design opportunities, better workflows, stronger adoption, and meaningful operational impact.
What you'll do:
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Lead DT&I’s design research practice with a strong focus on ethnography, real-world observation, and human-centered discovery.
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Plan, conduct, and guide ethnographic research to understand how users actually work in their real environments, including workflows, behaviors, workarounds, pain points, motivations, and moments of friction.
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Partner hand in hand with designers to translate ethnographic findings into journey maps, workflow insights, design opportunities, product concepts, and measurable experience improvements.
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Lead discovery efforts across priority product and operational initiatives, ensuring teams deeply understand the user, workflow, and context before defining solutions.
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Conduct contextual inquiry, field observation, shadowing, interviews, usability testing, diary studies, surveys, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and workflow analysis.
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Identify the gap between documented processes and real-world behavior, highlighting where operational friction, cognitive burden, duplicated work, or missed value occurs.
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Synthesize complex field observations into clear insights, personas, user journeys, opportunity areas, design principles, workflow recommendations, and executive-ready narratives.
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Collaborate with Product, Operations, Value Tracking, Change Management, Innovation Hub, Engineering, Education, and business partners to connect research findings to roadmap priorities, adoption strategy, measurable outcomes, and operational impact.
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Establish repeatable ethnographic research standards, templates, interview guides, observation frameworks, synthesis methods, and insight repositories that scale across DT&I.
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Coach researchers and cross-functional partners on ethnographic methods, field observation, research synthesis, facilitation, and storytelling.
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Facilitate research readouts, synthesis workshops, journey mapping sessions, and cross-functional alignment discussions.
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Measure the experience before and after product changes using qualitative feedback, usability metrics, adoption data, satisfaction measures, and operational indicators.
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Champion a culture where teams move from assumptions to evidence, from static process maps to real workflows, and from discovery activity to measurable product and experience impact.
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Bachelor’s degree in Design Research, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Service Design, Industrial Design, or a related field required.
- Master’s degree or PhD preferred.
- 10+ years of experience in design research, UX research, product research, service design, human factors, ethnographic research, workflow research, or related fields. Required
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3+ years of leadership experience managing researchers, research programs, designers, or cross-functional discovery teams. Required
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Strong experience leading ethnographic research, contextual inquiry, field observation, shadowing, interviews, journey mapping, usability testing, and mixed-methods research. Required
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Experience translating research findings into product strategy, design direction, workflow improvements, adoption plans, and measurable outcomes. Required
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Experience working closely with product designers throughout discovery, synthesis, design, validation, and implementation. Required
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Experience working in complex enterprise, healthcare, clinical, operational, or regulated environments strongly preferred. Required
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Strong experience leading ethnographic research, contextual inquiry, field observation, shadowing, interviews, journey mapping, usability testing, and mixed-methods research Required
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Experience translating research findings into product strategy, design direction, workflow improvements, adoption plans, and measurable outcomes Required
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Experience building research practices, playbooks, templates, insight repositories, and scalable operating models. Required
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Experience with process excellence, workflow optimization, Lean, Six Sigma, operational improvement, or change management is helpful, but this role should be grounded in human-centered discovery, ethnography, product impact, and measurable experience improvement Preferred
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Experience partnering with Product, Operations, Engineering, Value Tracking, Change Management, Innovation Hub, Education, Analytics, and business stakeholders Preferred
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Or equivalent combination of education and/or experience
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Licenses, Certifications, & Training:
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UX Research, Design Research, Human Factors, Service Design, or Product Discovery certification preferred.
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Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification or related NN/g training preferred.
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Training in ethnography, contextual inquiry, research ethics, privacy, accessibility, healthcare workflow, or change management preferred Preferred
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Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, or process improvement certification is a plus, but not required Preferred
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Research Methods Required
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Ethnographic research and field observation Required
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Contextual inquiry and workflow shadowing Required
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Semi-structured user interviews and stakeholder interviews Required
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Task analysis and workflow analysis Required
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Journey mapping and service blueprinting Required
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Usability testing and moderated/unmoderated concept validation Required
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Heuristic evaluation and expert review Required
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Diary studies and longitudinal research Required
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Survey design and mixed-methods research Required
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Behavioral observation and adoption pattern analysis Required
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Persona development, archetype development, and opportunity mapping Required
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Affinity mapping, thematic analysis, and research synthesis workshops Required
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Pre/post experience measurement and product impact evaluation Required
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Development of lightweight measurement frameworks to score workflow friction, cognitive burden, adoption readiness, and experience impact Required
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Triangulation of qualitative insights with quantitative data, operational metrics, satisfaction measures, time-motion data, and adoption signals Required
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AI-enabled prototyping and vibe-coding using platforms such as Lovable to create research tools, workflow simulations, scoring models, and lightweight measurement prototypes. Preferred
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Automation of research operations, time studies, observation capture, tagging, scoring, and synthesis workflows Preferred
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Travel requirements: up to 25% travel required
At HCA Healthcare, we are committed to fostering a culture of growth that allows you to build the career of a lifetime. We encourage you to apply for our Design and Research Director today. We review all applications promptly, and qualified candidates will be contacted to continue the process. Join us!
We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
