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Updated     2026.05.12
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`2026 Professional Summary`

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# Hello, I’m James <br> I’m a design leader who helps organisations build great in-house teams and digital services

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**James Cook**  
Bristol, United Kingdom

**Seasoned designer with 20+ years’ experience** developing teams, leading people, improving design operations, and delivering enterprise software systems

[hellojames.co.uk](https://hellojames.co.uk "hellojames.co.uk") • [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/hellojames "linkedin.com/in/hellojames") • [ADPList](https://adplist.org/mentors/james-cook "adplist.org/mentors/james-cook")  
Professional Summary for: [humans](https://hellojames.co.uk/media/James-Cook-summary.pdf "View PDF") • [robots](https://hellojames.co.uk/media/James-Cook-summary.md "View Markdown")  
*Work samples on request*

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## Highlights

- Grew OVO’s practice from 5→50+ and shaped teams, ways of working, and culture
- Established Springer Nature’s global UX community and design operations
- Led Design for Singapore Government’s first large-scale agile transformation
- Mentored 200+ people and interviewed 400+, building inclusive design teams
- Taught accessibility at UXThailand 2024 and Singapore GovTech A11y Week

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## Expertise

- Building and scaling design capability within large organisations
- UX strategy, design operations, and delivery assurance
- Cross-functional leadership across product, design, and engineering
- Leading research, content, and design in complex agile environments
- Embedding quality, accessibility, and scalability into software delivery

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## Strengths

- Helping product, design, and engineering work together more effectively
- Influencing prioritisation and trade-offs to align delivery with user needs
- Managing and growing designers, and sustaining communities of practice
- Hiring, team design, and defining effective ways of working
- Adapting approaches to problem spaces, and helping teams work better
- Collaboration, co-design, and iterative delivery across disciplines
- Facilitating workshops for alignment, inception, and shared understanding
- Analytical, structured thinking and pragmatic decision-making
- Rapid visual thinking to explore ideas and build shared ownership
- Framing solution direction, structure, and interaction design
- Guiding teams through organisational and industry change
- Enabling teams with servant leadership

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## Experience

**Design Mentor**  
2021–Pr • global • ADPList

**Lead Consultant**  
2022–24 • SG / AU • Thoughtworks

**Design Operations Lead**;  
**User Experience Practice Lead**  
2017–21 • UK • OVO Energy

**User Experience Lead**  
2015–17 • UK / DE / IN • Springer Nature

**Experience Design Senior Consultant**;  
**Experience Design Consultant**  
2012–15 • UK / SG / IN • Thoughtworks

**User Experience Designer**  
2011–12 • UK • Loco2 <span style="color: grey;">(now RailEurope)</span>

**User Experience Analyst**  
2008–10 • UK • Isotrak

**Web Developer**  
2007–08 • UK • Cambridge Assessment

**Freelance**  
2006–12 Freelance  
2006–07 Cyfle/Sequence Digital  
2005–06 Afanti Media

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## Study

**Design for Visual Communication** PGC  
University of the Arts London

**Design for Interactive Media** BA  
University of Wales, Cardiff

**Multimedia Product Design** HND  
Cardiff School of Art & Design

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## Recognition

2024 & 2025 ADPList Top 100 Mentors  
2019 OVO Values Heroes  
2016 GovInsider Innovation Awards  
2013 Google Global Impact Awards  
2006 NESTA Innovate to Educate

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*People before pixels.*

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