Howdy neighbors, I’m
John Wayne!
About Me
John Wayne Hill
Product Designer
Leader
Strategist
Builder
Product Designer
Over 16 years across a range of industries, platforms, and experiences.
I’m results-driven with a proven track record of execution, direction, and leadership for new and existing products. I work to ensure best-in-class experiences for customers and positive metrics impact, while helping team members grow and thrive.
Product Design
How I Like to Work
With 16+ years of experience—leading both large and small teams, I’m results-driven with a proven track record of execution, direction, and leadership for new and existing products. I work to ensure best-in-class experiences for customers and positive metrics impact, while helping team members grow and thrive.
Case Study
TurboTax
Full Service
From Verified Pro we pivoted Full Service from a software service to a human-led product to tackle the prior-year assisted market.
- Building customer trust
- Getting leadership buy-in
- Design strategy
TurboTax Full Service
Starting with Verified Pro
Important background and how I started at TurboTax; hint, it wasn’t to work on taxes! Verified Pro in TurboTax was the tip of the spear. We launched a ton of ‘firsts’ for Intuit.
TurboTax Full Service
The Verified Pro Team
I was hired as the first and only dedicated designer, along with a contract content designer. Had a tiny bit of help from VEP team. I was acting director. 5 Product Managers; 1 PD Manager with 12 engineers. With a borrowed researcher.
Prior-Year Assisted
-
1
13.9M files seeking a new tax professional
-
2
Start with Google. Screen via phone calls.
-
3
Can take weeks to even years!
Illustration by Storyset
TurboTax Full Service
The V.P. Product
Find a local pro near you. Get matched based on your tax situation, location, and more. Match to 3-5 tax pros. Book a call and get started. Find another if 1st isn’t a good fit.
TurboTax Full Service
The V.P. Product
Find a local pro near you. Get matched based on your tax situation, location, and more. Match to 3-5 tax pros. Book a call and get started. Find another if 1st isn’t a good fit.
TurboTax Full Service
The V.P. Product
Find a local pro near you. Get matched based on your tax situation, location, and more. Match to 3-5 tax pros. Book a call and get started. Find another if 1st isn’t a good fit.
50% of customers who detach worked with another Pro
TurboTax Full Service
TY24 Provocations
At the end of tax season, we started working on the next season and iterating on Verified Pro. My provocations pushed hard into ‘shopping’ with an AirBnb inspired experience.
TurboTax Full Service
My own VP + FS Vision
In early May I started to feel the ground shaking a bit with a sense that change was coming. So, I started provoking on what a combined Verified Pro + Full Service product would look like. How can Independent Pros + TurboTax employees come together in one place for consumers to shop?
TurboTax Full Service
A design vision
In early May I started to feel the ground shaking a bit with a sense that change was coming. So, I started provoking on what a combined Verified Pro + Full Service product would look like. How can Independent Pros + TurboTax employees come together in one place for consumers to shop?
Cathleen Ryan
The provocations on pro profile, green zone accounts, and starting with a pro ARE the strategy moving forward
TurboTax Full Service
Time for a
Re-org!
Of course in May, Consumer Group, decided to re-org and also shelf the Verified Pro program with very little support or resources. So, they took 95% of the team and dropped into Full Service. “Now, do it again!”
TurboTax Full Service
Looking Forward
Illustration by Storyset
TurboTax Full Service
New Intuit Pro
Provocation
As teams were being organized, work was in a lull. Our new director had us create provocations for the next tax year. I took the opportunity to push on my idea of Verified Pro + Full Service as one product; and a whole new app.
TurboTax Full Service
Starting to get somewhere
I continued to push for a brand new way of thinking about Full Service. With the expert being front and center. How might we make this experience more emotional?
TurboTax Full Service
Starting to get somewhere
I continued to push for a brand new way of thinking about Full Service. With the expert being front and center. How might we make this experience more emotional?
TurboTax Full Service
Vision Prototype
A full end-to-end prototype of the Full Service vision. Which stemmed directly from my work and direct contribution as well as leading through influence to make the “Expert is the Product” experience.
Also reviewed with CG SLT, Sasan, and Scott Cook.
TurboTax Full Service
Lead with Experts
A new Intro screen was designed for two reasons: 1.) to show that we have experts for your local situation and 2.) to help orient customers that they are in the right product.
Aesthetic-usability Effect; First Impressions
TurboTax Full Service
Tax Situation Questions
Get information from clients that help us to match them with the right expert based on complexity and expert skills. We replay this info later in our recommendations.
TurboTax Full Service
Intentional friction
By adding a little bit of intentional friction we will make recommend experts more credible and increase match satisfaction.
Delay for credibility
TurboTax Full Service
Friendly, familiar payoff
We set emotional anticipation with a blurred face and then showcase our recommended experts with data we know drives confidence.
Peak-End rule
TurboTax Full Service
Choice of Experts
Rather than just one expert recommendation, we show up to 3 experts for customer selection, biasing towards experts available right now.
Hick’s Law
TurboTax Full Service
Additional Information
We also allow customers to dig into each expert and see more information, like customer reviews and verbatim.
TurboTax Full Service
Getting Started
To actually get started with a chosen expert, we need additional information from customers to create an ‘engagement’ which is a technical limitation.
TurboTax Full Service
Auto Pop
Chat
Once the customer is in the Full Service Hub we automatically connect them to their expert via Chat. Then, we allow for customer choice on how to proceed.
TurboTax Full Service
Video Call to Start
Starting taxes usually happens with a one-way video call with the expert. This allows experts to gather necessary information and help get the customer’s necessary documents.
Benefits the business
TurboTax Full Service
Project Summary
We took all of our learnings from Verified Pro and everything we know about PYA customers and disrupted the Full Service product launching to an unprecedented 50% of customers in early tax season.
Illustration by Storyset
TurboTax Full Service
Impact
Then new “shopping” experience pulled dramatically more users into engagements and expert connections, and converted them at a higher rate end-to-end
- Engagement Creation: 2x baseline
- Expert Connection: 45.40% vs. 20.50%
- Start → Tax Prep: 18.80% vs. 13.60%
- Start to Close: 11.37% vs. 9.26% (ITC 123)
- ARPC: $336.09 vs. $319.76
Illustration by Freepik
Project Nah
Allow customers to better personalize their Home Timeline by quickly telling us which Tweets they do not like.
- Collaboration and cohesion
- Working with and extending Design Systems
- Small details matter
Case Study
Background & Team
My first Twitter project! Working with Senior PM, Eng Manager, and Eng Lead and my Design Director. 2 Weeks for initial design, about 4 more for final handoff. iOS, Android, and Web.
Project Nah
Project Nah
Customer Research
Customers don’t always like recommended Tweets but did not have an easy way to let Twitter know.
Illustration by Freepik
Project Nah
Business Needs
Twitter wanted to better understand customers’ preferences to better serve them content they would enjoy.
Illustration by Freepik
Project Nah
Data & Analytics
Twitter customers also don’t interact with Tweets they enjoy, leaving Twitter without information on personal preferences.
Illustration by Freepik
Project Nah
Design Insight & Expert Review
Having a multi-step flow would greatly decrease the number of customers who would tell us what content they didn’t like.
Illustration by Freepik
Project Nah
Business Needs
Increasing the size or real estate of a Tweet would greatly reduce the number of Tweets most customers would view.
Illustration by Freepik
Existing Signal Collection
Existing design was a multi-step flow from the Overflow menu. This is hidden and not many customers utilized it.
Project Nah
Designs & Prototypes
Lightweight, one-touch experience allowing customers to hide or dismiss Tweets and tell us why they didn’t enjoy the Tweet.
Icon Explorations
Project Nah
Initial
Design
Utilized existing components from Design System. But this design has many flaws and isn’t aesthetically pleasing.
Project Nah
Updated Designs
Worked with Design Systems team on new component with atomic-level elements and much better typography. Designed to be aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, and very easy to scan.
Project Nah
Replies & Notifications
Replies & Notifications teams also wanted a way for customers to hide/dismiss content which was also used in the negative weight algorithms.
Project Nah
Nah to
All
For experience consistency I worked with the Replies and Notifications teams to utilize the new Leave Behind Menu across all surfaces for recommended content.
Project Nah
Nah to
All
For experience consistency I worked with the Replies and Notifications teams to utilize the new Leave Behind Menu across all surfaces for recommended content.
Project Nah
Future Learnings
There are a lot of options in the Leave Behind Menu for recommend content, perhaps we could limit those to keep the Home Timeline more dense and skim-able.
Impact
- Increased personalization feedback from Twitter Home by 7.26%
- Increased Tweets Composed per user by .33%
- Increased Replies Sent by .42%
Illustration by Freepik
Intuit
Intuit Intelligence
(Project Omni)
This project aims to define the vision state for
"Conversational AI" specifically focusing
on how, when, and where QuickBooks customers can
access an open chat with AI for their business.
The vision state is meant to be
provocative aiming for release by Q4 FY26 with
experiments to prove out the provocation released
along the way.
Project Omni
Impact
- 4.6M logins exposed
- 18.5% Engagement
- 4.5M+ total queries submitted
- 34.6% Repeat Engagement
- 18.5% Conversion Rate
Illustration by Freepik
Why Nextdoor
-
1
Neighborhoods
I love where I live and want to be more involved in the local community, the neighborhood. San Francisco also has so many different neighborhoods with different cultures. It's really interesting and what makes this city so great. I also love that my own neighbors, in my building, help take care of each other by getting packages, etc.
-
2
Community
It's super important to me. Times in my life when I've had strong communities have been the best. I help run a Sci-Fi and Fantasy book club in SF and many of those folks have turned into friends. And I'm currently building an app for in-person communities organized around cultural artifacts (books, films, albums) as the reason to gather. The pattern I keep coming back to: people want connection, but the tools to find it are mostly built for content, not community.
-
3
Interesting problems
Local trusted voices bringing neighborhoods to life is a real, underserved space; and one where design choices have outsized impact on whether the content feels human or algorithmic, trustworthy or noisy. That's the kind of design problem I want to work on.
-
4
Team Anita
Anita hired me at Ancestry and helped me scale into a Director role. We also worked together at Twitter. She's been a friend and mentor since, and I believe in the team and product she's building.
Wrap Up
Product Designer Strategist,
Thinker,
Builder
Over 16 years of experience. I’m results-driven with a proven track record of execution, direction, and leadership for new and existing products. I work to ensure best-in-class experiences for customers and positive metrics impact. From big picture thinking, complete overhauls, to tiny 4px improvements.
Thanks, neighbors
Some Quotes
You should be so proud of the experiences you've created. They are humanized and beautiful, and really solve our largest customer problems. We've had a lot of shifting priorities and intensity has been high, but you've not only rolled with the punches but have created high quality solutions to each problem. I'm always impressed by you. Principal Product Manager
JW is an excellent design partner. His craft is top notch, with very positive feedback from customers and leaders. He not only leads with a POV doing actual design work, but holds a high bar across his design team for amazing work. He operates in the “new way” as a builder, blurring the lines between functions with tight collaboration and incredible velocity. Director, Product Management
Your work consistently rises above the mark, continuously offering the best solutions for our customers' problems. Your tirelessness in finding customer problems, your flawless designs addressing them, and your ceaseless hard work and collaborative partnership is nothing short of astounding. Senior Engineering Manager
I want to express my deepest gratitude to you for your invaluable contributions. Without your expertise, dedication, and collaborative spirit, none of this would be possible. You've been instrumental in bringing this vision to life. Director, Product Design
John Wayne has never let lack of process or formality hold him back from making things real. Director, Product Management