John Lewis

Product Design Leadership

Work

Seven case studies. Seven different leadership jobs.

Generosity is the flagship loyalty story. Product Evolution owns coherence, Growth owns the commercial portfolio, Leadership owns organizational scale, Research owns decision quality, Motion owns experience quality, and Reels owns zero-to-one discovery.

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What these case studies show

  • A loyalty relationship and the product criteria that kept it coherent
  • Commercial choices across reward formats, operator workflows, and platform infrastructure
  • Organizational scale, research-led product decisions, and motion criteria
  • A zero-to-one discovery workstream sequenced into smaller product bets

Case Study Index

One portfolio, seven distinct contributions.

Each card names the decision, John’s role and scope, and the strongest supported result or organizational change for that story.

Growth and LoyaltyMulti-quarter initiative

Building the Casino Generosity Ecosystem

Led the design strategy for connecting rewards, promotions, CRM, and loyalty into a clearer generosity model, with measurable results across Rewards Club, loyalty-branded touchpoints, and market expansion.

LoyaltyCustomer UnderstandingGrowthService Design
Role / Scope
Senior Product Design Manager leading growth and loyalty design | Cross-channel casino loyalty and rewards
Business Impact
Rewards Club's four-month U.S. A/B test recorded +6% APDs, +9% GGR, and a +9% generosity perception score.
Organizational Leverage
Documented shared criteria for judging how generosity should appear across product surfaces and markets.
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Rewards Club How it Works preview
Product CoherencePeriod-based product evolution

When Products Grow Faster Than Their Design

A product-coherence story about using customer questions and shared decision criteria to connect navigation, merchandising, rewards, progress, and return paths as the product matured.

Product CoherenceNavigationInformation ArchitectureDecision Criteria
Role / Scope
Product design leadership across Casino, Growth, and Generosity product areas | Product coherence across navigation, merchandising, rewards, progress, research, and measurement
Decision / Contribution
Created shared criteria for judging whether local additions made the whole product easier or harder to use.
Organizational Leverage
Brought product, engineering, analytics, CRM, research, marketing, games, operations, and delivery partners into shared product questions.
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From promotion-led browsing to visible rewards and progress
Org and Team DesignMulti-year organization-building work

Scaling Design Leadership Across Casino

Managed up to 8 direct reports, developed managers and lead designers, raised the hiring signal, and made product decisions easier to carry into executive forums.

Org DesignManagementQuality Standards
Role / Scope
Senior Product Design Manager responsible for people leadership, hiring signal, quality practices, and executive communication | Direct management, manager development, hiring, critique standards, and executive-facing decision forums
Decision / Contribution
Expanded leadership capacity through 2 managers and 2 lead designers.
Organizational Leverage
The core organization grew from 3 to 15 across Design, Research, and Content, with a peak of 21.
Read case study
Design leadership operating model
Commercial Product LeadershipMulti-year portfolio

Designing Across a Casino Growth Portfolio

Led design across a portfolio of casino growth initiatives, using initiative-level results to guide decisions about reward formats, operator efficiency, support load, infrastructure, and market execution.

Commercial StrategyGrowthOperationsPlatform
Role / Scope
Product design leadership across growth-critical casino initiatives | Reward formats, promotions, operator workflows, support efficiency, and platform infrastructure
Business Impact
Reward Machine Bonus Draw recorded +18% higher NGR and +22% higher eGGR than control, while Games Global Bonus Spins recorded +363% daily active players for Love Island Reel Vibes in Pennsylvania.
Organizational Leverage
Made operator time, testing speed, support load, and reporting capability visible as commercial product decisions.
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Market story board
Research and StrategyResearch-led product strategy work

Turning Research Into Product Strategy

Rebuilt research operations around product-confidence signals so 13 designers and 2 researchers could connect evidence to product choices before and after launch.

ResearchDecision QualityRoadmap Strategy
Role / Scope
Design leader connecting customer evidence to product choices, sequencing, and executive decisions | Decision signals across usability, understanding, engagement, and perceived generosity
Decision / Contribution
Separated foundational product questions from later engagement bets.
Organizational Leverage
Supported 13 designers and 2 researchers.
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Research-to-strategy executive framework
Craft and SystemsMotion criteria and pattern exploration

Raising the Experience Bar Through Motion Systems

Defined how motion should communicate state, feedback, and reward value; created examples and pattern proposals; reviewed them with engineering; and kept Rive use scoped to Reward Boxes.

Motion SystemsExperience QualityDesign Engineering
Role / Scope
Design leader defining motion criteria and reviewing implementation proposals with engineering | Reward reveals, feedback states, transitions, pattern proposals, and Rive implementation exploration
Decision / Contribution
Defined criteria for prioritizing motion where it could explain state, feedback, or reward value.
Organizational Leverage
Defined motion criteria for review with design and engineering.
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Reward reveal state
Discovery and Product Strategy6+ week accelerated discovery initiative

FanDuel Casino Reels Discovery Strategy

Led a 6+ week design workstream with 3 product designers, 2 researchers, and 1 content designer, moving from player evidence through concept testing with 10 customers and into a sequenced roadmap.

0 to 1 StrategyDiscoveryConcept Testing
Role / Scope
Senior Product Design Manager and zero-to-one design workstream lead | Game discovery, short-form content, trailer modules, and a possible Reels and Explore experience
Decision / Contribution
Aligned the team on Average Games Played per user per month as the behavior future discovery work should evaluate.
Organizational Leverage
Aligned a multidisciplinary team around a testable question.
Read case study
Game Reels concept

Earlier Work

Selected projects from the archive.

A concise record of earlier work that shows range across regulated products, research, consumer services, trust, and product strategy.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Retirement Transformation

Archived financial-services transformation story about making complex planning decisions easier to navigate.

Leadership relevance

Useful as category range for complex regulated decisions, but should stay secondary until leadership scope and business impact are verified.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Learning Management Systems During the Pandemic

Archived research story about learning-platform trust, usability, and remote education breakdowns.

Leadership relevance

Useful as evidence of research judgment under messy conditions, but not strong enough to carry the current Director-level narrative.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Craftable

Archived product concept about discovery, community, and marketplace-style decision support.

Leadership relevance

Useful as a breadth signal, but should stay archived because the stronger current portfolio shows higher-stakes leadership and business impact.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Skincare Coach

Archived consumer strategy story about confidence, guidance, and personalization in a self-care journey.

Leadership relevance

Useful as a human-centered breadth signal, but should not compete with loyalty, growth, research, and leadership stories.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Trust Neighborhoods Redesign

Archived trust-and-information architecture story about making neighborhood content more credible and easier to evaluate.

Leadership relevance

Potentially useful for trust-and-content strategy, but should stay archived unless leadership role, business context, and verified outcomes are strengthened.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

Nukeleus

Archived concept story about user choice, personalization, and decision control.

Leadership relevance

Archive only; the current portfolio has stronger evidence for strategy, leadership, and measurable business outcomes.

UXfolioSelected Work / Archive

SAVR Design Sprint

Archived sprint story about reducing friction in a high-intent consumer task.

Leadership relevance

Archive only; the useful signal is decision-speed and task clarity, not the sprint process itself.