James Kirkwood
UX - UI - Creative Direction - Art Direction - Conceptualisation
My Core Skills
UX / UI Design | Art Direction | Creative Direction | Team Management | Stakeholder Management | Visual Design
Additional Skills In
User Research | Information Architecture | Game Design | Branding | Photography | Data Analytics | Illustration | Typography
What I’ve Done
I’ve recently been working at King on Candy Crush Soda, as a Senior UI/UX designer, where I was responsible for the product design for a new feature, called The Season's Hub, designed to enhance the seasonal narrative experience. I also creating key art and implementing themed artwork across a selection of UI screens to reflect seasonal themes.
Previously I worked as Head of Design on a highly gamified crypto app called Token.com for Monolith, designed to make the purchasing and selling of various tokens fun and intuitive. I hired a team of designers and in six months took a loose concept through to a set of fully fleshed out designs including all of the various user journeys and user states.
Before that I worked at King as Associate UI Director on Candy Crush for King; Driving and delivering unforgettable experiences that delight players across the world in one of the most successful mobile games of all time. I was accountable for the look, feel and usability of the UI throughout Candy Crush Saga.
And before that I worked at KidsKnowBest as Creative Director who are a full service youth focussed digital media agency. I was responsible for creative strategy, direction and execution of survey app called Yak Yak and of the overall visual identity of the agency. Yak Yak now regularly polls over 60K children per month.
Previously I worked at Beano Studios as Lead Product Designer, Azoomee as Head of Design, Discovery as Senior Designer, Milo Creative as Art Director and Mind Candy the creators of Moshi Monsters as Senior Designer.
I have often worked through the entire product cycle from initial ideation sessions, research, conceptualisation, prototyping through to deployment and beyond. Creating work for a variety of target audiences from all walks of life ranging from preschoolers to teens from freemium match three players to permanent chronic pain sufferers.
Process and Methodologies - How I like to work
I believe that research is at the core of all good product design and I am an advocate user centred design methodologies in all of their forms. When approaching a problem and I like to think it through from as many angles as possible, balancing the user’s needs with the business goals.
To achieve this and to keep thinking aligned workshops are key and I’ve enjoyed using both Google’s Design Sprint Process and the Lean Service Design Canvases. Whenever possible adhering to the design thinking process of empathise & understand, define the problem, ideate, prototype and test.
I have very scruffy sketchbooks, but they’re always full of wonderful thoughts and ideas. If you work with me you’ll probably get used to me coming up to you early one morning, incredibly excited about an idea for a new flow, solution to to a tricky ui conundrum, idea for a logo or just weird thing that I’ve drawn.
I am comfortable managing other designers, taking great pleasure in sharing knowledge and helping others grow. I enjoy forming bonds with stakeholders, love liaising with developers and generally get a kick out of making stuff and then seeing the effect that it has. I prefer to work in a lean and agile environment but am adaptable and can also work in a waterfall framework if preferred.
Hobbies and Passions
In my spare time I love to garden, cook and play guitar and anything that feeds my creativity. I also like go on stupidly long walks and wild camp. When I’m not doing that you’ll probably find me in a darkened room hunched over a console playing the latest open world RPG.