I’ll take your product from concept, to delivery & market, and make sure it thrives
I’ve worked in a multitude of business verticals, including travel, education, health insurance, fintech, mining and transportation, charities, and government.
I’ve run lead across every segment of the double diamond, from research, to conception, delivery, and finally to optimisation.
My name is Joe Johnson. I started my design career in 2004 in London, where I worked for 2 years as a web designer and front-end developer. In 2016, I moved to Australia, where I worked as a lead experience designer for Mudbath (an Endava company) for the past 8 years. I've now moved back to the UK, where I'm looking to settle down permanently and a find full-time position as a lead experience designer or director.
Superscript is an insurtech company and digital broker redefining business insurance. As Lead Product Designer, I oversee and manage the design function, coaching and supporting team members while driving initiatives that elevate both process and output. I’ve implemented new tools and DesignOps workflows that have increased delivery speed, improved cross-team collaboration, and strengthened the team’s ability to execute complex projects at a high standard.
I led the redesign and successful launch of the company’s new quote funnel, aligning it with clear goals and roadmaps from discovery through to implementation. I maintain and evolve the Design Language System, ensuring brand consistency across products, and recently leveraged it to rapidly deliver a new superquote journey. Our UX and UI advancements are directly shaping the company’s new direction.
As a manager, I’ve fostered a collaborative culture where everyone has a voice in shaping our projects and processes. Initiatives such as sprint goals and review sessions have improved visibility over progress and created a stronger sense of ownership within the team. I actively champion process improvements, ensuring the design function remains adaptive, innovative, and closely aligned with business priorities.
Mudbath (an Endava company) is an Australian based digital agency that delivers business strategy, high-end web, and digital applications to a variety of industries.
Mudbath sponsored me to work in Australia in 2016 as a mid-UX designer, but over my tenure, I achieved the role of lead-experience designer. In this role, I worked in cross-functional collaboration with product owners and solution architects during the discovery phase of projects to understand and guide the requirements while creating an effective strategy to deliver the product within the client’s timeframe and budget. I would then oversee the project from start to finish, managing the design team and front- and back-end developers to deliver the best product with the available resources, and then optimise it further once it was launched to market.
I managed a team of designers, ensuring that they were achieving as much as they could from their role, from a development, happiness, and business perspective. I found it to be one of the most fulfilling parts of my job. This helped grow the team into a logical structure as well as improve design operations.
The last two years in the organisation were defining. I moved down to Melbourne to set up our new office so that we could expand into the Victoria market.
Here, I was responsible for hiring, procurement, client engagement, and team management. I also became a member of the Strategic Management team, creating and participating in company directives that would improve CapEx and OpEx, improve company culture, and guide the future of the organisation.
I also presented at conferences on the benefits of good communication and improving DesignOps.
Ariel is a disability inclusion start-up that focuses on making the world more accessible and visible for the disability community.
In 2020, co-founder Kate Maslen (a disability support worker) was consistently struggling to find available activities and establishments that would cater to the specific needs of her clients, so she had an idea: what if there was an app that showed the user all of the available disability facilities and services of organisations and businesses? One that allowed the disability community to filter the world by their needs, be it: accessible indoor and outdoor seating, sensory-friendly environments, allowing assistance animals, or at-home delivery services.
With the digital expertise of co-founder Jordan Freeman (a senior delivery manager), they started a journey to create Ariel. The first iteration of the app launched in Newcastle, NSW, in 2022.
I joined Ariel in 2021 as a director and chief design officer to support and guide the future of the company. We're currently developing the next iterations of both the mobile application and the business portal, which will allow us to scale into the worldwide market. This position is the epitome of Ikigai; it allows me to develop one of the most human-centric applications that caters to every disability and also educates organisations on facilities and services that 1 in 6 people globally require. In this role, I use all of the skills I've developed at Mudbath as an experience designer, manager, and business developer.
Currently, it is expanding at a dramatic rate, acquiring new users and businesses throughout New South Wales (Australia), with national growth into other states expected within the next year.
In my role with Tomorrow TTH, I was tasked with UX and UI design as well as front-end development. I was required to carry out regular site maintenance and audits of site functionality, as well as the design and build of custom email campaigns.
This included my first complete lifecycle project, Batcam, for which I created the entire project, from initial briefing, design, front-end development, and content management system (CMS) integration. Under their mentorship, I learned to integrate javascript libraries like jQuery into my repertoire as well as SCSS into front-end styling. I worked on the design and build of CMS (Wordpress and Drupal) to give our clients a fully customisable product.
In addition, I also worked on interactive banner advertisements that were shared domestically with millions of users. While designing and building custom email campaigns using Oracle as the marketing platform. In this capacity, I lead the high-volume email project for GAME, the UK’s biggest game retailer. This included setting up, testing, and troubleshooting the tracking of emails, the email browser responsiveness, and ensuring all user preference functionality was enabled.
Ten Thousand Hours, before it merged with Tomorrow TTH was my first full-time role at a digital agency. In this position, I was dedicated to the design and build of multi-channel performance marketing media for e-commerce websites, print and digital magazines, and publishing companies.
I built landing pages, fully integrated promotional websites, designed and built email creatives, designed images and content for Facebook and Google ad campaigns, as well as programmatic marketing campaigns. Some of the companies I worked with include Time, The Economist, The Guardian, Immediate Media, Haymarket, Wowcher, and Thomas Cook.
Modules: digital design and development, advanced mathematics, statistics, computer science, 3D design, documentaries, photography, and film.
A-levels: design technology, art, psychology and physics.
I’ve used most design and project software over the course of my career, but these are my applications of choice and were used to create this website.
Got a question, comment or just want to say hello? Please drop me a line and I’ll get back to you shortly.
