About
John Haynes
I design simple customer experiences for complex fintech and regulated services, currently reducing the cost of compliance as Design Lead at The Pensions Regulator.
I've spent my career leading design on complex customer-facing journeys in fintech and regulated services. Before moving into government, I led design at Entertainment Partners — film-industry payroll services used by enterprises including Disney, Apple, and Netflix, contributing to £100m+ in gross revenue.
I now apply that same commercial rigour to public services, where the users don't get to choose another provider and the consequences of poor design are measurable in real people's lives.
I'm currently Design Lead in the User-Centred Design team at The Pensions Regulator, leading design for the Value for Money framework — a major new policy under the Pension Schemes Act 2026 that will shape retirement outcomes for 16 million DC pension savers. I built TPR's Figma component library from scratch and am a trained GDS Design Assessor.
Alongside that, I founded AnswerTime — an AI-powered async research tool that parallelises user interviews to cut cost by ~100×.
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2024 — present
Design Lead
The Pensions Regulator, UCD
Leading design for the Value for Money framework. Built TPR's Figma component library from scratch. GDS Design Assessor.
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2024 — present
Founder
AnswerTime
AI-powered async user research tool. Designed and built solo. Partnering with Mindware AI on the next version.
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2022 — 2024
Lead Product Designer
Entertainment Partners
Sole designer across three squads building the film industry's first fully digital payroll service. £100m+ gross revenue. Customer satisfaction 4.5/5 across 18 products.
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2022
Strategic Design Lead
FYLD
Led R&D for a utilities safety platform. Discovery and proof-of-concept for a machine learning system to predict worksite incidents. £560k OFGEM Strategic Innovation Fund secured. Named inventor on a patent application.
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2019 — 2022
Senior Product Designer
WeGotPop
Principal designer for an end-to-end casting and crew management platform. Built the design system from scratch; hired and led the design team.
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2016 — 2018
Head of Product
YourWelcome
Launched a hospitality tablet across 30 territories. £500k ARR in the first year.
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2026
Mental Health First Aider
MHFA England
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GDS Design Assessor
Cross-government
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2023
Business Analyst
Qlik
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2022
UX Management
IxDF
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2011
BA Television Production
University of Westminster