# John Armitage > Product Designer, UX Practice Leader, Author Location: Berkeley, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johnarmitage John Armitage is a strategic digital product designer and practice leader. He's been a principal designer and team/practice leader in both consulting and product development organizations. Recent foundational design work has involved simplified analytics, performance management, collaboration, codeless development, credit access, robotic lawnmowers, and pricing of insurance risk. John creates value for product organizations in the six areas of Products, Processes, People, Promotion, Presentation, and Publication. His specialty is to address business challenges, particularly those with an analytic component, with elegant and coherent products that customers and users find useful and appealing. His academic expertise in design thinking and practice infuse his work with timeless principles of aesthetics, utility, and practicality. While with EPM provider Host Analytics, his team's efforts moved Host's product from Visionary to Leader quadrants in two Gartner Magic Quadrant domain reports. His 10 years with business intelligence provider BusinessObjects, and then SAP, began with the creation of BOBJ's UX team in Paris, France and Vancouver, Canada. John made the business case for UX investment, established UX practices, trained teams, and integrated UX roles and deliverables into the product development lifecycle. At SAP, John led a long-term design research effort to envision next-generation solutions for visual analytic consumption, resulting in the LAVA visual analytic design language. Noted for its radical simplicity and broad utility, LAVA positions SAP to bring practical, analytic decision-making to all areas of the enterprise. Project results, and a process commentary, are published in John’s 2016 book "Bringing Numbers to Life: LAVA and Design-Led Innovation in Visual Analytics". John works at all product levels, including basic design standards, new product features & versions, product concepts to inform business opportunities, UX strategies for executives, and branding. He is hands-on and leads by example. ## Work Experience ### Principal Product Designer @ LoanStreet Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | Remote / NY City LoanStreet is enabling loan portfolio syndicated investment opportunities for small financial institutions, such as regional credit unions, by virtue of simplifying and automating the loan management lifecycle via our SaaS platform. ### Design Strategist @ Narrativ Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Remote / NY City Consulted on North Star strategic design concepts for this pioneer startup. Narrativ is building the ecosystem for digital publishers and content creators to link product recommendations to retail sites for commissioned product purchases. ### User Experience Lead @ Zepl / DataRobot Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | San Jose, California, United States Led product and branding design for notebook-based authoring environment for data scientists. Zepl acquired by DataRobot in May 2021. ### UX Subject Matter Expert @ Experfy Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Remote / Boston, MA Helped recruit a network of data science and AI UX design talent for the Experfy talent network. Experfy is interviewing and onboarding designers and researchers for project work with Deloitte and other clients. ### VP of Design @ Tremor Technologies, Inc. Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Remote / Boston, MA Series A startup. Led design for product, brand, and messaging. Tremor provides a market-clearing auction platform for buyers and sellers of risk in the re/insurance industry, as well as tools for market price modeling and collaborative contract negotiation. ### Academic Innovation Liaison @ Husqvarna Group Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 Helped Husqvarna USA and Corporate in Sweden connect with US university business strategy, design, and engineering research groups to develop new concepts for Husqvarna's robotic lawnmower product line. Completed a business model innovation project with a team of Design MBA students from the California College of the Arts, and sponsored a robotics design & development competition with grad students at UC Berkeley's Jacobs Center for Design. ### VP, Product Design @ TrustScience Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Remote / Edmonton, AB, Canada Series B startup. Led the design strategy and execution to provide a credit scoring and decisioning platform, using alternative data and machine learning, to sub-prime lenders. Offering included loan application, trust evaluation models, and a borrower mobile app to manage credit applications and personal data profiles. ### UX Adviser @ Hi-flier Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 Seed Stage startup. Hi-Flier is building an agile interpersonal collaboration and decision-making platform. Provided foundational design strategy and deliverables for early product versions. ### UX Adviser @ FoxtrotCode Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 Seed stage startup. Foxtrot Code provides a cloud solution to prepare, model, and reuse data and algorithms that enable discovery and prediction for non-technical knowledge workers. It features a visual, codeless development platform and a marketplace for application sharing, sales, and distribution. ### Head of User Experience @ Host Analytics Inc (now Planful) Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Redwood City, CA Led the product design effort for Host's cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management platform. In 12 months our product team moved Host into the Leader position in two separate Gartner Magic Quadrants, primarily through feature, quality, and user experience improvements. ### Published Author: "Bringing Numbers to Life: LAVA and Design-Led Innovation in Visual Analytics"​ @ The Interaction Design Foundation Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 My book, "Bringing Numbers to Life: LAVA and Design-Led Innovation in Visual Analytics", was published in March 2016, and can be read free online via The Interaction Design Foundation. It portrays the results and design process of the LAVA visual analytic design project conducted at software providers BusinessObjects and SAP from 2004-2014. 500+ paperback, full-color pages with visual analytic design images, design process analyses, and historical background to this breakthrough design language intended to open up quantitative analysis to mass consumption. You can read it online, or buy the hardcopy via Amazon, and see full demos, videos, and documents from the book via the links below. The PDF version is available free to IDF members. The Interaction Design Foundation is an open-source online education provider for interaction designers, offering online courseware and certification across a variety of user experience topics. BNtL will serve as the foundation for future IDF visual analytic instructional content. ### Chief Product Designer, Visual Analytics @ SAP Labs Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 | Palo Alto, CA Led the design of broad-based, next-generation design systems for visual analytic products used in the workplace. Conceived and led the design and production of SpendWell, a mobile personal finance management app for the Indian market. ### Principal User Experience Architect @ SAP Labs Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 | Palo Alto, CA Led product design for next-generation workplace productivity applications for consumption on desktop, Web, and mobile devices. Worked on information visualization, analytics, business networks, and enterprise collaboration projects. ### Director, User Experience @ SAP BusinessObjects Jan 2004 – Jan 2008 | Paris, France and San Jose, CA Created, grew, and managed the global user experience team working on corporate product design and standards for market-leading business intelligence software suite. From the office in Paris, France, managed 20-person UX team locally and in Vancouver, BC to create specifications for engineering teams in North America, Europe, India, and China. BOBJ acquired by SAP in 2007. ### Senior Interaction Designer @ Peoplesoft Jan 2003 – Jan 2004 | Pleasanton, CA Lead product Designer for Expense Management and Project Management applications. ### Design Lead @ EC Wise Jan 2001 – Jan 2003 | Corte Madera, CA Principal designer for custom software design and development boutique. Projects included business intelligence reporting, enterprise expense management, and networked interactive entertainment storage and playback systems. ### Creative Lead @ Viant, Internet consultancy Jan 2000 – Jan 2001 | San Francisco, CA Led design for internet services consulting teams on financial services, GIS, and entertainment projects. Clients included Charles Schwab, ReplayTV, and Consors/BNP Paribas. ### Design Lead @ Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. Jan 1995 – Jan 1999 | Emeryville, CA Account management and leadership for UX design and product definition consulting engagements for a variety of large organizations & international startups. Clients included Sabre Holdings / Travelocity, US Federal Reserve Bank, Bank of America, and Adobe. ## Education ### Master's Degree in Graphic Design Rhode Island School of Design ### Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design & Management Miami University ### Worthington HS ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johnarmitage --- Source: https://flows.cv/johnarmitage JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johnarmitage/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13