Jon Hensley

I am a user experience design leader, manager, facilitator, and educator, and a passionate advocate of the human-centered design process. By listening to people early and often throughout the design process, and collaborating with teams of talented, smart people, I craft experiences that are efficient, useful, and pleasurable, yet are balanced with the goals of the business.

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Certified LUMA Institute Instructor
and Facilitator

I am a certified instructor and facilitator of the LUMA Institute human-centered design framework, with the ability to teach others how to observe human behavior through ethnographic, participatory, and evaluative research methods; how to frame problems for analyzing and understanding patterns, determining priorities, and mapping systems; and how to envision possibilities through concept ideation and prototyping methods.

Senior Manager, Product Design, CVS Health
October 2022–present

• Lead and manage the Design Practice Enablement team to support designers in process, resource and tool use, and education, to improve UX maturity

• Represent the Design practice in a cross-functional team with Product and Engineering to improve discipline and product team practices and processes

• Partner with CVS leadership on building product vision and strategy

• Coach and guide the professional development of junior and senior product designers

User Experience Design Director, LUMA Institute
July 2021–October 2022
As an integral member of the LUMA leadership team, I oversaw and managed the UX design and research discipline to solve challenges and craft experiences that highlighted LUMA’s products. I built relationships with leaders throughout the company while working collaboratively across cross-functional teams to improve UX maturity, define vision, strategy, and roadmaps, as well as establish best practices, resources, and tools, for both external customers as well as internal employees.

Experience Design Strategist & Manager | Design Thinking Educator, Arity
September 2018–July 2021
As UX Lead of Arity’s mobile applications experiences, I worked directly with senior leadership, the vertical’s Director of Product, Product Marketing, and Sales on strategy and vision for the vertical. I facilitated workshops to frame problems, uncover patterns, and prioritize efforts; created research initiatives to uncover user behaviors and needs; ran concept ideation sessions to envision possibilities; and liaised with customers to build trust and deliver innovative solutions.

I also lead efforts to spread human-centered design within the company, teaching and certifying multidisciplinary cohorts consisting of product, engineering, data science, marketing, sales, and others to use LUMA’s human-centered design framework in their day-to-day work on their product teams.

As UX manager, I hired, coached, mentored, and guided the careers of multiple Experience Designers as well as contributed to improving the efficiency of the Arity Experience Design team’s processes and practices.

Senior User Experience Architect, Allstate
June 2016–September 2018
Responsible for leading UX project initiatives, using discovery research methods to uncover unmet user needs and business opportunities. This included observing human behavior through ethnographic and participatory research; using evaluation methods to frame problems for analyzing and understanding patterns and systems; and sketching and concept ideation and prototyping to envision future possibilities. Certified instructor of the LUMA human-centered design framework, teaching multidisciplinary groups how to use design thinking in their day-to-day activities. 

Facilitated design workshops within the company to help product teams use human-centered thinking to gain alignment, frame problems, prioritize, and envision solutions. 

Collaborated with cross-functional teams of product owners, product designers, visual designers, UX researchers, content strategists, and developers in delivering software solutions within Agile and XP methodologies. 

Coached, mentored, and guided the careers of multiple Experience Designers.

Interaction Designer, Cars.com
December 2012–June 2016
Responsible for the discovery of user needs through exploration of user pain points and analysis of site metrics. I facilitated concept creation through sketchboard and ideation sessions with a variety of stakeholders and I created wireframes and interactive prototypes to convey interactions to team members and to inform testing. I formulated test plan strategies and performed task and user analysis and also created and analyzed concepts through AB testing.

Mentored and coached junior product designers.

Visual Designer, Cars.com
September 2010–December 2012
Delivered visually engaging and creative design solutions as well as collaborated with front-end developers to create and deliver HTML and CSS. During the two years in this role, I designed Cars.com's dealer reviews from the ground up as well as redesigning pages in the research path that included the vehicle buying guide pages, the model list pages, the model details pages, and the reviews landing page. Additionally, I was part of a team of designers who redesigned the look and feel of the entire site, which resulted in the development of a Cars.com brand standards style guide. The visual design of the site continues to garner high Net Promoter scores every quarter.

Graphic Designer
For many years, I created innovative designs for various large companies throughout the world including Encyclopaedia Britannica, Heinemann-Raintree, Scholastic, Girl Scouts of America, Merriam-Webster, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Oxford University Press, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction - DePaul University
The DePaul HCI master's program combines concepts and methods from graphic design, computer science, and cognitive psychology, incorporating participatory and user-centered design methods to explore and evaluate information and communication technologies such as mobile and desktop applications. I have studied information architecture, accessibility, inquiry methods, ethnographic participatory observation, usability evaluation methods, prototyping, and data visualization. I graduated with distinction, receiving a 4.0.

BS in Art with Concentration in Graphic Design - Illinois State University
At Illinois State, I pursued a degree in art that included painting, life drawing, and lithography, with a special concentration in graphic design. In this environment, I crafted and developed a love of design and a sensitivity to grid systems, hierarchy, space, typography, and color. Additionally, I was chosen to join Design Streak Studio, a faculty-selected and student-run organization that provided graphic design services to local businesses and organizations.