Experience and Resume for John Wayne Hill

Product Designer and Leader

John Wayne Hill is a San Francisco based Product Designer. He is a results-driven designer with a proven track record of execution, direction, & leadership for new & existing products. An expert in executing design and driving positive metrics impact. John Wayne is adept at collaborating with cross-functional & executive partners to develop & improve products through breakthrough innovation. He has a demonstrated ability to lead and drive product results through design direction, execution, and operations.

Years Experience 15+ years Leadership Experience 9+ years Direct Management 6+ years

Experience

Impact

Key metrics and business impact

Grew AncestryDNA from 1M to 22M+ customers

Brought AncestryDNA Traits to market, selling 5M+ upgrades and kits

Overhauled Ancestry DNA iOS app to 4.8 rating

Increased Tweets Composed per user by .33%

Increased personalization feedback from Twitter Home by 7.26%

Increased Replies Sent by .42%

illustration of a man with a pie chart looking at rising metrics as a graph

illustration of a bearded man getting an oscar award

Experience

Awards & Talks

Just some of the recognition I've recieved

2017 Red Dot Award | Best of the Best in Product Design | Aerial Photography

2014 Interpretive Interactive Installations Award | AAM

2013 GOLD | Best Museum Environment | Event Design Awards

2012 | Speaker | Midwest UX | Living with Wearable Tech

2011 | Workshop Session | Midwest UX | MacGyver Prototyping

Testimonials

What People Say

Ancestry

“I wish I had more “John Waynes!” His maturity and calmness led the team through a time of a lot of change. His work on numerous initiatives unlocked design and impacted the product and team, as well as the customer and contributed to exceptional holiday sales. ”

Manager

Senior Director of Design

Ancestry

“John Wayne is a self-starter, highly strategic and puts in the effort to carefully understand customer problems. This makes him a strong product partner. He is able to think of the problem clearly and hence influence his team to design accordingly, as he leads with strategic intent, going beyond the focus on a sole feature to focusing on the entire product. John Wayne also demonstrated in- depth understanding our customers and can articulate their needs.”

Manager

Senior Director of Design

Idean / Frog

“… you elevated the team with your professionalism, solid process, design skills, and eagerness to share and teach what you know.”

Manager

Director of Design

Ancestry

“John Wayne is an amazing mentor and leader. His voice and strategic point of view is integral to the success of our team. He has led multiple products to launch and is continuously doing a great job at pushing everything forward. He is an asset to the design team and he is valued by all of us.”

Direct Report

Senior Product Designer

Ancestry

“Gifted and direct in guidance. Confident, unflappable, articulate, & candid.”

Colleague

Principle Product Designer

Excellent Work

“Great designer and compassionate leader.”

Colleague

Director, UX & Product Design

Roles and Repsonsibilities

Work Experience

Need a PDF, jump down a bit

Senior Staff Product Designer

Twitter | San Francisco, CA | May. ’22 – Jan. '23

Responsible for the core of Twitter. Rapidly took on a range of large, complex projects driving through leadership & execution, delivering positive metrics impact. Drove & executed on the largest Twitter surfaces; Home, Tweets, & Tweet Details; through vast usability improvements, mental-model mapping, conceptual changes, & design operations via project tracking, design reviews, and critiques.

Make Twiter Easy - Featured Case Study

Sabbatical

Self | San Francisco, CA | Oct. ’20 – Jan. ’22

Self-imposed sabbatical to focus on re-centering myself and my creativity. I focused on building furniture and started a tiny woodworking business, DeathGhost Studios.

VP, Design

True | San Francisco, CA | May. ’20 – Oct. ’20

Head of Design and IC Designer for a social-media startup. Responsible for overall strategy, vision, & design execution. Implemented organizational changes & processes for efficiency and predictability. Acted as Player/Coach directly contributing designs and managing a team of 6 designers.

True Onboarding - Featured Case Study

Director, UX & Design

Ancestry | San Francisco, CA | Oct. ’16 – Feb ’20

Designer Leader for Ancestry DNA. Led & directed 30+ team members spanning 5 pillars across 2 offices. Fostered & grew a culture of innovation through reviews, critique, & empowerment. Collaborated with cross-functional partners & executive leaders to bring forward a vision & direction for product improvements & 0-1 new products..

Ancestry Mosaic - Featured Case Study

Design Lead

Idean (now Frog) | San Francisco, CA | Mar. ’15 – July ’16

Design Lead for multiple teams on multiple client projects. Managed a team of six interns and three designers. Served as the Design Lead for a new consumer product for a large action camera company, working for 1.5 years to bring the product to market. Designed a multi-user/size/input hardware/software experience which helps teams work together better both remotely and colocated in the same space.

Aerial Photography - Featured Case Study

Interaction Designer

Stimulant | San Francisco, CA | Oct. ’12 – Feb. ’14

I designed the MOHAI Launchpad for the Bezos Center for Innovation, the digital experiences for the Reunion Tower in Dallas, Tx, the Intel Ultrabook Exhibit in the Intel Museum, a creative drawing application for large tablets for Samsung’s PIT group, and more. I designed for uncommon computing through collaboration, experimentation, prototyping, and iteration with clients, engineers, and product teams.

Interaction Designer

Punchcut | San Francisco, CA | May ’11 – Oct. ’12

At Punchcut I designed a watch-battery powered smart watch, music applications, communication applications, and e-commerce applications for Fortune 500 companies, corporations, and start-ups. I designed mobile experiences for smart phones, tablets, and TVs. Delivered artifacts from sketches and prototypes, to full annotated wireframe documents.

User Experience Designer

Mozilla | Mountain View, CA | May ’10 – Aug. ’10

Designed and prototyped Firefox Home Tab. Researched and presented perceived performance for the Firefox startup process.

Web Design & Developer

I.U. Communications | Bloomington, IN | Jan. ’09 – Aug. ’09

Designed and prototyped a campus-wide emergency system for IU. Created front-end code for multiple websites. Critiqued and implemented improvements to current websites.

Technical Intern of Design

Cerner | Kansas City MO | June ’08 – Aug. ’08

Prototyped and tested designs for a hospital education administration system. Designed patient focused entertainment and education system.

Web Design & Developer

I.U. Alumni Association | Bloomington, IN | Aug. ’06 – May ’08

Responsible for the creation, maintenance, and coding of 13,500 pages, 85 sites. Wrote web code in multiple languages.

Education

M. S. Human Computer Interaction Design

Indiana University

B. S. Informatics

Indiana University

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