Jon Roo

I lead design across Hippo’s largest and most complex public sector accounts, working in multidisciplinary teams while contributing to business development, practice leadership and AI ways of working.

• I led design on the DWP Universal Credit Fraud and Error programme, a live national service used daily by 2,200 agents, processing 50,000 reviews a month, and helping recover £173m in a single six-month period.
• I led the design on NHS’ Manage Your Appointments, a national vaccination booking service running across 6,000+ sites with over 900,000 bookings in a single campaign period.
• As one of Hippo’s formally appointed AI Champions, I contribute to new ways of working across the practice throughout Hippo, such as AI-assisted prototyping to build hyper-realistic prototypes in days, not months.
• As Practice Rep for Design, I led an overhaul of Hippo’s traditional case study writing process, which reduces time to completion from weeks to hours.
• I contribute to bid writing and UX business development at Hippo.

I joined as Made Tech’s first Principal Designer, establishing design as a credible discipline within an engineering-led consultancy of around 80 UCD professionals.

• I shaped design culture through regular crits, away days and internal talks, building shared standards across the practice.
• I led design across four major government accounts including GDS and the Home Office, overseeing quality and strategy for 8 designers on the Home Office account alone.
• I delivered the CORE social housing data service at MHCLG, cutting cost per transaction from £2.01 to £1.03, achieving 100% CSAT in private beta, and passing both alpha and beta GDS assessments.
• I contributed to bid writing across key government frameworks.

I worked across HMRC’s flagship digital services in the Payments team and Live Services, delivering service and interaction design.

• I designed the VAT repayment tracker from discovery through beta, helping address a £1M annual cost to HMRC driven by 50,000 helpline calls, by giving taxpayers online visibility of their repayment status for the first time.
• I led accessibility improvements to the Corporation Tax service following a failed DAC audit, making the service usable by assistive technology users and improving the experience for all.

I led design as Firefly scaled from a small UK startup to over 500 schools across 60 countries.

• I grew the design team from just myself to a team of five, establishing clear roles, skill frameworks and career progression.
• I built and shipped a production design system of 200+ components across web, iOS and Android, accelerating output without sacrificing design quality.
• I embedded a dual-track agile design process across the product organisation, combining generative research with rapid prototyping and testing.
• I contributed to a 97% customer retention rate and a product used by 250,000 people across 60 countries.

I spent seven years across freelance and agency roles, designing web and app products for a range of clients and industries. This period gave me a strong foundation in visual design, front-end development and the commercial realities of delivering digital work at pace. I then spent three years as a designer at Firefly Learning before being asked to build and lead the design team.

• Location Littlehampton (near Brighton)
• Phone 07766 256899
• Email [email protected]
• Websites roodesign.co.uk and roobottom.com
• LinkedIn