John Knowles Email & Phone Number

London, England, Gb

London, England, United Kingdom

In AA-X, the AA's innovation team, I contribute to establishing our leadership in the connected car market across B2C and B2B. Our first product, Vixa, is now on the market.Research Leadership & Methodology• Lead AA-X team user research projects, providing guidance on optimal research techniques suitable to timelines and budgets• Plan and conduct qualitative and quantitative research like in-depth interviews, usability testing, concept testing, and surveys.• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, offering flexible methodologies and converting data into actionable insights• Research insights I helped uncover for trip logs and battery health, have informed our product roadmap for FY25.Stakeholder Engagement & Knowledge Sharing• Create and lead multidisciplinary workshops that engage senior stakeholders• Setup regular events like Friday afternoon popcorn sessions, continuous discovery, and research planning sessions to build customer empathy within the group• Developing a customer insights hub and tagging system, to make research insights more accessible and provide quicker access to a holistic picture of our customers• Support product owner, BA, and leaders to prioritise research activities in-line with our product roadmap and business goals• Share knowledge with researchers in core AA businessUX Research Development• Created reusable guides and templates for the team to self-serve on lightweight user testing• Mentor and upskill team members, promoting a culture of learning, high-performance and elevating our teams UXR maturity• Consolidated and cleaned our Vixa customer research panel to ensure an actively and effective research panelCulture & Values• Active in improving the design team's principles, culture, and fun• Enhanced the design teams' reputation within the group, by sending blogs, standard documentation, clear meeting purposes, processes, and outcomes.Tools & Technology• Proficient in UserTesting.com, Dovetail, Figma, and Miro.

United Kingdom

Worked across teams in the small business accounting (SBA) group. Spent 12 months embedded with the Xero Go team.Xero Go team:* Collaborated with AU, NZ, and UK agile teams to improve, position, and launch the mobile app in the UK market.* Created the team's first-ever research roadmap, recommending opportunities to enhance the user experience of the app for the immediate and long term.* Co-led a 4-week closed beta with the UK and AU-based Product Owners, designers, developers, and go-to-market team, before market release. Gathered qualitative, SUS, and UEQ usability feedback using Intercom, Qualtrics, and Alchemer. * Synthesised all existing research to date to highlight knowledge gaps along the customer journey* Develop async comms process, increasing transparency and streamlining conversation to a single COnfluence space.* Ran a 3-part interactive workshop series helping Xero Go and UK Tax teams join the dots of their work and find efficiencies through creating shared operating principles and ways of working. SBA team:* Tested 5 future concepts for 5yr+ vision for SBA in support of Xero's FY24-26 strategy refresh. Using Figma and Miro to evaluate desirability and usefulness of features with high-growth-focused small business owners. * Mixed-methods diary study understanding how context influences how small business owners run their businesses. Helping us to prioritise projects and position and talk about products. * NZ GST contextual inquiry projectDesign Research team:* Lockdown learning presentation on Cognitive Psychology - expanded research capabilities by teaching 40 researchers how to apply these principles to design research. Identifying the most suitable projects for maximising impact.* Leveling up Xero research engagement and influence in the broader research community* Received multiple shout-outs for #challenge, #ownership and #team, from peers for my research work

Auckland, New Zealand

Transformed the city's public mobility and transportation products and services using user-centered design and design thinking principles, identifying innovative opportunities to improve or pivot current offerings.Safety team:* Explore sprint, uncovered that only 30% of incidents were reported by AT staff because of a lack of follow-up from management. * Identified what factors lead to customers behaving aggressively towards front-line staff.Bus team:* Bus to Bus Explore + Design sprint understanding the customer experience connecting between bus services in a single journey. * Most people would take 1 longer journey, rather than 2+ buses, as switching came with too much risk and prior experience of the buses not linking up.Rail team:*Incubate sprint - implementing the 'pink pack' concept during a real work scenario over Eatwer weekend and measuring its effectiveness.* Greater increase in customer satisfaction through social media comments, and feedback on the ground to AT ambassadors, fuller replacement buses, less aggressive behavior towards bus drivers and staffCustomer Central team:* Sense and Scan - Removed project bias among executive leaders, by developing a single prioritisation process that multiple business units could use to compare all CX requests side by side. A 4-step process for research requests, aligning priorities with the org's strategic goals using the DVF framework in Qualtrics. * Sprint onboarding - Increased engagement with participants by redesigning the sprint onboarding process. Created a service blueprint, new tailor-made, pre-read materials and templates, that were accessible to all.* Hosted weekly all-hands forum with 90+ internal and external attendees, showcasing the value and impact of our research projects and engaging in Q&A.

Auckland, New Zealand

Managed and consulted on multiple concurrent projects in a fast-paced, agile environment collaborating with creative, design, development, engineering, SEO, UX, strategy, media, and account teams. Client-facing PM managing over 40 projects with individual project budgets up to $500k, staying within budget and technical constraints. Advocated for UXR and Design - designed, presented, and delivered low and high-fidelity wireframes, and prototypes in Balsamiq, Axure, and Marvel. Facilitated UAT and AB tests for Guinness and Cardrona clients.Achievements:Enhancing agency reputation: - Established trust with senior stakeholders at the key account, Lion, managing and consulting on all their projects enhancing the agency's reputation.- Delivered a large cocktail brand campaign with multiple web, tv, and website assets on time and under budget, expanding the agency’s reputation as a trusted partner.- Leading teams: Hosted regular stand-up, demo, and retrospective meetings twice a week with cross-functional agile teams of 6-12 for large technical projects. Ensured the JIRA backlogs were groomed and ready for design and engineering teams to act on.- UX workshops: Led SME and client interviews, user testing sessions gathering critical qualitative and usability feedback in the design phase.

Auckland, New Zealand

- Managed key client relationships for Mitro 10 and Flight Centre.- Migrated clients from legacy email platforms to IBM’s marketing cloud platform, Silverpop. - Created IP warming plans to ensure open and click rates remained within business requirements.- Data cleaning of email databases.- Suggested and advised on email content. - Set up automation programs and closely. - Monitored, reported, and supported the transition. Achievements:- Managed the development, integration, and testing of Flight Centre's customer preference centre.

Auckland, New Zealand

Worked alongside marketing, digital, data, solutions architects, IT, legal, and finance teams to manage and deliver projects to the best digital and customer experience outcomes for insurance and investment products and services.Raised awareness and educated the business on the benefits of lean UX by giving presentations at group meetings and advising colleagues on its potential impacts. Advised the digital team to adopt a user-centered approach through effective data analysis, research, UX design, rapid prototyping, and regular usability feedback sessions.Responsibilities:- Created user scenarios and user stories- Conducted content auditing and gap analysis- Defined a feature prioritisation and weighting system, helping to define an MVP- Insight reporting using Google Analytics- Managing the change release process and change management- Working with risk committees and change advisory boards

Sydney, Australia

- Planned and managed photo shoots, 3D graphics, web, mobile, and radio campaigns, and digital projects. - Get your glam on project - website, POS, radio, social media- Have it all project - website, social media, newsletter, OOH, video- Managed Milo, New Caledonia Tourism, Manicare clients

Sydney, Australia

I was part of the digital team supporting marketing campaign initiatives. - Provided strategic support and solutions to the content and marketing teams. - Managed day-to-day digital projects. - In-house videographer & editor - producing a weekly video with the Chief Economist on market predictions.

Sydney, Australia

Projects: - Australand retail website- Coles Express iOS & Android applications- BAU for - Arnott’s, Fuji Xerox, Acer, Colgate-PalmoliveAchievements:- Personal commendation from Coles brand manager for my handling of the Coles Express app projects

Sydney, Australia

Projects:- IAG (direct-to-consumer) interactive insurance web tool- Nutricia maintenance/content publishing/proofreading

Sydney, Australia

- Managed projects of all sizes across web, mobile apps, and campaigns. - Worked closely with direct marketing, creative, design, development, UX and brand agencies under the M&C family. - Managed projects for Pizza Hut, Google SBU, ADMA, and Freedom Furniture.

Sydney Area, Australia

- Planned, managed, and delivered digital projects of all sizes. - Supported UX and SEO specialists in wireframing, evaluating, and creating information architecture documents using card sorting and tree tests. - Mapping out SEO requirements. Managed projects for: Musashi, Nestle, and Mercedes Freightliner clients.

Conducting User Research With People With Disability

Activities and Societies: - Who to include in your research and how to recruit the participants - Considerations for accessibility.

Introduction To Cognitive Psychology: An Experimental Science

Activities and Societies: - Logic and reasoning - Visual thinking - Mental rotation and mental imagery

User Experience Design

UX research (competitive analysis, contextual inquiry, interviews, surveys, personas), Information Architecture, Prototyping, Usability.

Other, Agile Fundamentals

Agile methodology fundamentals - sprint planning, roles, scrum, user stories, burn-down charts, backlogs, kanban, estimation

Other, Growth Hacking Workshop

Other, Diploma Of Management

Health & safety, recruitment, team management

Broadcasting & Digital Technology, Broadcasting

Television broadcasting

Btec National Diploma, Media Production

Camera operating, video editing