YEARS

James Helms

Design Strategist, UX Leader, Creative Advisor

ex-Intuit,

ex-Bottle Rocket Studios

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past clients

I love multi-user systems, platforms and dilemmas. I ardently embrace curiosity as a verb. I take the tour, meet the folks, get my hands dirty, ask the unasked question and make to think. And draw to talk. I enjoy unwinding systems with service design and content strategy. And I lead like I design: with curiosity, humility and vulnerability.

James’s expertise

Explore James's key skills, specialized expertise, and industry preferences below.

Skills

Coaching & Mentoring

Design Strategy

Content Strategy

Systems Design

Recruiting

Expertise

UX/UI/IxD

Service Design

Learning & Organization Design

Industry experience

Fintech

Hospitality

Travel & Tourism

Consultancy

Software

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Share your challenge and work with James

PASSIONS

Areas I'm passionate about

As creative leaders with a shared commitment to quality, collaboration, and creativity, we're proud to pursue out most meaningful work and deliver the best every time.

MAIN PASSION

🤗 Inclusion & Accessibility

As an advisor, I’ve learned from Series A startup Kanarys, a DEIB platform based in Dallas committed to exposing and addressing disparity of experience across age, race, gender, and other factors. As a Design Leader, I was tasked with building a diverse and high performing organization, driving accessibility and inclusion down through our offerings, and also across our company’s processes and policies.

Offerings

Individual, team and company coaching and advising

I rely on simple design frameworks to help individuals, teams, and companies clarify problems, focus on moments that matter, construct experiments and metrics to quickly learn, pivot and deliver value.

Applications Development (Web, Mobile)

Behavioral Insights

Brand Design

Brand Innovation

Brand Strategy

+37 more

Share a challenge with James

Share your challenge and work together with James

Share a challenge

showcase

James in action

See James Helms's work to see the extent of their creative portfolio.

AllConsulting & AdvisingProjects

Advising a startup focused on DEIB through data

Consulting & Advising

Advising a startup focused on DEIB through data

💪🏻Gender Inequality

🤗 Inclusion & Accessibility

💰Income Inequality

Startup Strategy

Design Systems

+2 more

Advising Kanarys has been an education for me in the DEIB space while affording me the oportunity to coach teams and leaders about product strategy, user research, design systems, prototyping and uncovering value through experimentation.

Projects

Data and Privacy Center

🙋🏼‍♂️Digital Wellbeing

💾Digital Rights and Data Privacy

+5 more

An artificial intelligence strategy based on trust requires transparency about how data is collected and used for customers' benefit to personalize, automate and anticipate their needs and expectations. Research, Service design and Prototyping uncovered key insights to accelerate data collection.

Consulting & Advising

Parking Spot Branding

Brand Strategy

Branding & Identity

+3 more

Using simple insights gathered from examining the experience, the competition and the opportunity, I invented a durable brand which has grown to a $500M/Year business with 38 locations at 22 airports. From prototyping the first shuttle to maintaining the brand as creative director for over 15 years

Projects

Client Collaboration Experience

Collaboration

Design Research

+3 more

This multi-sided experience addressed two of the most painful aspects of tax preparation for tax professionals and their clients: data collection and collaboration. Addressing tax professionals' biggest pain point: 65% of their time spent asking for, waiting for and inputting clients' data.

Projects

Showtime Sync

Brand Value Extender

Concept Development

+3 more

An Emmy-nominated companion experience designed to pair with Showtime's bloickbuster programming. Technology that could identify a show by its "audio fingerprint" to sync content with the live watching experience. An amazing client partnership to embrace cutting edge technology to engage customers.

I believe in Neol

A member of the Neol Creative Leaders community

I joined Neol for three reasons: 1. To connect with a community of experienced design leaders from whom I hope to learn a great deal. 2. To refocus my experience and energy to addressing the big unsolved problems of our age: sustainability of both planet and people. 3. To restore balance to my life through flexibility, inspiration and impact.

James Helms

Design Strategist, UX Leader, Creative Advisor