John Knowles

Background

About John Knowles

My career has been an adventure in understanding people and creating experiences that improve their lives - colleagues and customers. From developing community relationships and enhancing accessibility at Auckland Transport to building world-class financial tech tools for small businesses at Xero, and now experimenting with the connected car experience at The AA, I'm passionate about embedding scalable design research processes that unlock the potential of teams and organisations using human-centred design.Recent Impact- Built comprehensive, end-to-end compliant research operations at AA-X, supporting a 30-person product organisation- Developed LLM prompt library, reducing idea-to-prototype time from days to minutes- Led 180+ research sessions across diverse stakeholder groups - from government staff to migrant communities- Reduced customer churn by 45% through evidence-based design decisions.I'm happiest when building research cultures where everyone's voice counts and empowering teams with tools and processes that turn chaos into clarity. What I'm most proud of is navigating complex stakeholder dynamics and building trust in sensitive environments - like embedding my team in a community with historic mistrust of government organisations. With strategic thinking, hands-on experimentation, and open collaboration, I love turning evidence-based decisions into transformational outcomes.Specialties: Multi-stakeholder research, inclusive facilitation, research operations, cross-functional strategy, psychological safety advocacy.