Concept Designer

The Concept Designer is part of the Experience Design team, which is responsible for improving the end-to-end customer experience and distributor experience.

The team’s role is to identify, prioritize, and guide the implementation of customer experience solutions through customer journey development and human-centered design (HCD) principles, while aligning to the customer experience vision and strategy.

The team visualises the needs, expectations of customers/agents, as well as the objectives and impact of business, to improve end of end customer journey. This includes engage/pre-sale, buy, service, claims, and salesforce management journey. They work to inform experience solutions with cross functional stakeholders from Customer, Distribution and Operations.

The Concept Designer role is accountable for translating abstract service blueprints and journeys into tangible, visual experiences for fast and confident decision-making. It is the visual bridge between the "why" (XD) and the "how" (UX/UI Design).

This position reports to the Head of Experience Design, Asia.

Position Responsibilities:

• Convert complex journey maps and ambiguous "Digital Touchpoints" into clear, visual representations that everyone can grasp.

• Facilitates shared understanding across regional and market stakeholders, shifting conversations from “What does this mean?” to “Is this the right direction?

• Early visualization of concepts helps validate ideas before committing to full-scale UX/UI development, saving time and resources.

• Improve the end-to-end customer journey, focusing on the value streams: pre-sale engage, buy, service, claims, and salesforce management to achieve the desired customer experience and business outcome.

• Understand and evaluate detailed journey maps created by Experience Designers that outline the end-to-end digital or offline experience of a customer/agent service, proposition or product including key segments, touchpoints, interactions, emotional states, pain points and needs throughout their journey.

• Visualise the digital/none digital experience through conceptual visual design tools, such as sketches, storyboards, motion graphics, explainer videos or interactive prototypes to illustrate potential solutions and influence stakeholder buy-in.

• Ensure the conceptual design translates to UI/UX design components and practice by working with UI/UX designers.

• Essential part of the role will be generating creative ideas and concepts that effectively demonstrate business goals as well as customer/agent’s needs, optimized for a wide range of devices and interfaces, for supporting business cases.

• Rapidly iterate initial concepts and designs, following concept testing. Collaborate with Service Design, Research managers, and external vendors on set up, completion, analysis and recommendations from concept testing.

• Present and communicate ideas and concepts clearly to a range of stakeholders across multiple functions and at varying seniority levels, ensuring that there is a common understanding and buy-in for the proposed solutions.

• Participate in sprint planning, review and retrospective of the respective project teams. Support delivery squads with clarification and concept tweak as necessary.

Required Qualifications:

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in a design related discipline such as: Interaction Design, Design management, Human Computer Interaction, Service Design, Design Strategy, or other relevant experience

• Strong program management, organisational and coordination skills required; working experience with Agile is considered a strong advantage.

• At least 6 years of experience running strategic design, service design, and end-to-end experience design projects within or for large organisations.

• Develop design artefacts such as personas, current and future state customer journeys, service blueprints, storyboards, concept/service prototypes, etc.

• Proven ability to be able to work with data, presenting quantitative and qualitative insights in support of one another.

• A natural collaborator and ability to relate well with others.

• Possess a high level of empathy

• Results-oriented, with can-do attitude.

• Undeterred by obstacles and challenges; ability to think creatively to overcome barriers to achieve objectives.

• Comfortable with ambiguity; open to new ideas; flexes with changing business priorities and situations.

• Customer-oriented or human-centred design to problem solving and service design methods to enable employees and organisations to support customer, agent and banca experience excellence regionally and locally

• Excellent command of spoken and written English.

• Excellent and effective communication and persuasive skills are required with the ability to communicate across all levels of the organisation.

• Ability to influence decisions and gain consensus across different channels and lines of business, particularly in the case of competing interests and priorities.

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 https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

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 [email protected].

Working Arrangement