John Wayne Hill

Roles and Responsibilities

Work Experience

Need a PDF, jump down a bit

1. 

   Product Design Manager

   Intuit (QuickBooks) | San Francisco, CA | Feb. '25 – Aug. '26

   Player-coach: I personally designed the flagship AI experience while building and leading the team. Designed the core Intuit Intelligence experience and its interaction framework, taken from concept to GA in 5 months, with patterns now used by 20+ teams across Intuit. Also designed the agentic Business Feed (44% engagement, target was 25%), part of the launch the CEO called the most significant in our history. Recognized with Fast Company Innovation by Design 2025 and presented to the Board of Directors. Scaled the design, research, and content practice from 3 to 13 to meet demand.

   • Intuit Intelligence — Featured Case Study
2. 

   Principal Product Designer

   Intuit (TurboTax) | San Francisco, CA | Sept. '23 – Feb. '25

   Designed and launched TurboTax Verified Pro, a 0-to-1 dual-sided marketplace matching consumers with the independent tax pro best suited to their situation (84 NPS, 72 PRS, 21% referral share vs a 5.2% forecast). Provoked and prototyped the combined Verified Pro and Full Service vision that redirected the strategy, reviewed by the CEO and Intuit's founder. Held design-lead and acting-director ownership of the initiative.

   • TurboTax Full Service — Featured Case Study
3. 

   Senior Staff Product Designer

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

   Designed across Twitter's highest-volume surfaces: the Home timeline, Compose, Replies, and personalization. Partnered with ML engineers to model negative recommendation signals. Shipped experiments that lifted personalization feedback 7.26%, Tweets composed .33%, and replies sent .42%, through usability improvements and mental-model mapping.

   • Twitter - Project Nah — Featured Case Study
   • Make Twitter Easy — Featured Case Study
4. 

   Sabbatical

   DeathGhost | San Francisco, CA | Oct. '20 – May '22

   Stepped back from corporate work to start a woodworking studio (deathghost.com). Built the brand, products, and customer base solo.

5. 

   Head of Design

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

   Designed a private-by-default social network with separate threads for family, friends, and community, owning product vision and end-to-end execution across platforms. Player-coach, directly contributing design while leading a team of six.

   • True Onboarding — Featured Case Study
6. 

   Director, UX & Design

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

   Set design direction across 5 product pillars; grew AncestryDNA from <1M to 22M+ customers, brought Traits to market at 5M+ kits, launched 5 new 0-to-1 products, and lifted the iOS app to a 4.8 rating. Directed a 30+ person product and content design org across two offices, fostering a culture of critique and innovation.

   • Ancestry Mosaic — Featured Case Study
7. 

   Design Lead

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

   Design lead across multiple client teams. Served as design lead for a new consumer product for a large action-camera company, working 1.5 years to bring it to market. Designed a multi-user, multi-input hardware and software experience that helps teams work together, remote and colocated.

   • Aerial Photography — Featured Case Study
8. 

   Interaction Designer

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

   Designed the MOHAI Launchpad for the Bezos Center for Innovation, the digital experiences for Reunion Tower in Dallas, the Intel Ultrabook Exhibit at the Intel Museum, and a creative drawing application for large tablets for Samsung's PIT group. Designed for uncommon computing through collaboration, experimentation, prototyping, and iteration.

   • M.O.H.A.I. Launchpad — Featured Case Study
9. 

   Interaction Designer

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

   Designed a battery-powered smartwatch, music, communication, and e-commerce applications for Fortune 500 companies and startups across phones, tablets, and TVs. Delivered everything from sketches and prototypes to fully annotated wireframe documents.

10. 

    User Experience Designer

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

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

11. 

    Web Designer & Developer

    Earlier | Indiana | 2006 – 2009

    Design and front-end work at I.U. Communications, Cerner, and the I.U. Alumni Association, including a campus-wide emergency system and the coding of 13,500 pages across 85 sites.

Education

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  M.S. Human-Computer Interaction Design

  Indiana University

• 

  B.S. Informatics & Computer Science

  Indiana University

Teaching: Assistant Instructor and mentor for Interaction Design, HCI, and Social Informatics, Indiana University, 2009 – 2010.