Bio Testimonials Projects
About me
Here’s how I don’t introduce myself at a party
I’ve written three books and am a popular keynote speaker on customer experience and business strategy.
I run a design agency called Methodical in California. We began as a UX design firm, but swam upstream into customer experience and product strategy. I co-founded the business with my best friend Ben. Miraculously he is still my best friend, even after working together for thirteen years. Incidentally, thirteen is the age my parents shipped me off to boarding school. I’m worried what will happen next year.
I am also a venture partner at Tiller Partners, a VC fund based in LA and am a senior visiting fellow at Bayes Business School, City University of London.
After twelve painful rejections my first book — The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences — was eventually published, and won the CMI’s Management Book of the Year in 2014. It still sells thousands of copies at a time today, even though my agent once rather uncharitably called it “Book Zero.”
My second book — The Grid: The Master Model Behind Business Success — was published by Random House to critical acclaim and has been translated into ten languages.
Book three — Mastering Uncertainty — was co-authored with my close friend Csaba Konkoly. We make a great team: he’s a phenomenally successful investor and entrepreneur with invaluable business insights, and I can type.
As a speaker I’ve been invited to share my ideas with a gallimaufry* of organizations including Microsoft, Volkswagen, Salesforce, American Express, Leica, the FBI, Paychex, Google Campus, Pelican Products, CCI, Ogilvy, The Beverly Hills Hotel, Publicis, Syzygy Group, Sanlam, Contagious, O2, HSBC, Experian, The Institute of Directors, KwikFit, Gartner, Dun & Bradstreet, and Genesys.
As a consultant and designer I’ve worked on projects for a roster of well-known companies around the world, including: Vodafone, Bupa, ARM, IBM, Telefonica, Flex, Experian, Ogilvy, Land Rover and a host of well-funded startups. I’ve seen some big hits and equally big misses, and learned far more from the latter.
I’ve been a member of the Royal Chartered Society of Designers for over a decade and hold a B.A. in Business and Information Management from Oxford Brookes University, who let me in out of pity after I failed my school exams. I repaid the favor by giving the graduation speech there in 2018.
I live in Santa Monica, California. When I’m not at work I enjoy photography, running, playing the piano, collecting whisky, messing around with motorcycles, and proving that not everyone in California is great at surfing.
*A mixed jumble or medley — a great word to drop into casual conversation.
A selection of testimonials
“As Alan Kay, one of the great figures in the development of the computer industry once remarked, ‘A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points’. Reading or listening to Matt Watkinson is as close as you can get to guaranteeing this happy effect. He is one of the deepest and most original business thinkers I have ever come across. Every conversation with him is as startling as it is enjoyable.”
“Matt and I have worked together on a variety of projects. I have learnt much from his structured and methodical but highly creative approach.”
“Matt Watkinson was appointed to Cass Business School as an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in recognition of his impact and growing reputation as a global expert in business strategy and practice. Since then his teaching at our annual flagship Symposium has become a highlight of the programme. His reputation among the alumni across the world is not built only on his award-winning books and presentations, but the generous way he offers his very valuable time and expertise. Cass values him greatly.”
“Matt Watkinson is a gifted writer and communicator.”
“I engaged Matt Watkinson to provide independent advice and expertise as we built and defined our Customer Experience capability. He is absolutely the first person I would recommend as an expert on the topic and has an easy humor that makes working with him a true pleasure.”
“I haven’t seen work like his since I was at Apple.”
“Any product marketer looking to give their initiatives a greater chance of success would benefit from Matt’s stellar analysis skills and authority on the subjects of customer experience and business strategy.”
“Matt first became involved with Laundry Republic at a very early stage of the business. His advice was invaluable. He has consistently offered a level of insight that as a startup we never expected to access.”
“Matt has capabilities that belie his years and eclipse most of his peers in terms of the sheer insight and intelligence that he applies to his work.”
“The time that I’ve spent collaborating with Matt has produced some of the most interesting and progressive work I’ve done in the last year. His depth of knowledge is seemingly infinite, but he possesses an ability to summon that into pragmatic and directed strategic and experience work that is unlike anything we currently produce.”
“A fantastic experience design consultant that we would definitely use again for our highest profile projects.”
“Impeccable professionalism and outstanding work. Business stakeholders always want to invest in Matt’s solutions. An irreplaceable talent and a pleasure to work with.”
“Matt is extremely creative, hard-working, intelligent and relentless in his pursuit of creating the best experience for the user.”
“In my role as a UX manager, I must have reviewed hundreds of portfolios. Matt’s is the best I’ve seen.”
“Over a 15-month period Matt worked on, and delivered a number of key strategic projects for Tag, and simultaneously assisted our teams on many tactical and day-to-day issues. He had a very significant and positive impact on Tag as a company and we are now in the process of benefitting from the foundations he laid down in so many areas.”
“Matt helped us formulate an end-to-end user experience process that will serve us well into the future. He thrives on challenges and believes in nothing less than absolute perfection.”
“The quality of Matt’s output is always exceptional and he has a great eye for detail in both design and business analysis.”
“Respectful, courteous and utterly professional in all dealings, Matt is one of the most astute, intelligent and conscientious people that I have met throughout my career.”
“Matt is extremely professional and passionate about creating software that is exemplary in form, function, and user experience as well as being extremely knowledgeable about Agile processes and how they fit into different organizations and corporate cultures. He raised the bar and will be missed.”
Selected design, CX and strategy projects
P&O Ferries
UX design — Dover, UK — 2005
I was hired to redesign the online travel booking experience for P&O. The new design lifted conversion rates 70%, doubled online turnover and produced an estimated 10:1 ROI.
eDigitalResearch rated it the UK’s top travel website, primarily for its “easily negotiated booking process.” Without the success of this first project who knows where I’d be? Hopefully not in a budget hotel in Dover.
Argos
UX design — Milton Keynes, UK — 2007
Determined only to work in the most glamorous locations in the British Isles, I was chomping at the bit to get to Milton Keynes, where I was the lead interaction design consultant on this site redesign for the UK’s equivalent of Walmart.
The new site won Retail Week’s Online Retailer of the Year Award and generated over £1 billion of revenue in its first year.
Friend’s Provident
User-centered design consultancy — Salisbury, UK — 2007
I was contracted to define the user-centered workflow, processes, and deliverables necessary to deliver an ambitious 3-year program of 120 e-business projects.
Heroically I also commuted to Salisbury every day, a place so inconvenient to get to, you can’t even get there from Salisbury.
Tag Worldwide
Design consultancy and management — London and New York — 2008
I was hired to bring design leadership to Tag's enterprise web application CMD, used by 350,000 users worldwide to manage global advertising campaigns, assets and reporting for brands such as Land Rover, Intel, H&M and Coca-Cola.
The project coincided with a period of explosive growth at the company, and I will never forget — or fully remember — their Christmas parties.
Vodafone Group
Service design — London and Amsterdam — 2009
I was contracted to produce strategic concept work that would define the future of Vodafone’s self-service offerings worldwide, and subsequently to design a series of new multi-channel services — including journey mapping and conceptual design — for a global audience of 24 countries.
I also learned that, “We’re from Group, and we’re here to help,” provokes colorful reactions at a country level.
Yell Group
Application design — Reading, UK — 2010
I worked in the call center for Yellow Pages as a teenager, and returned like a boomerang almost a decade later to take on a lead experience design role. The brief was to consolidate 40 separate tools used by sales and customer service teams into one enterprise web app to run on desktop, iPhone and iPad.
This was my first time working in a company in terminal decline and the contrast between my two tours of duty was startling. Since then I’ve been fascinated with adaptability in business, clinging to Andy Grove’s maxim, “Only the paranoid survive.”
Bupa
Mobile application design and workflow consultancy — London, UK — 2011
Bupa is a global healthcare brand, who hired me to bring user-centered design expertise to a new team tasked with developing a series of mobile apps. In addition to providing advice on workflow and process I led the design of a member care app that set a new standard for the industry.
IBM / Ogilvy
Experience design consultancy — Paris and New York — 2012
I worked as an extension of the Ogilvy team in Paris and New York to provide additional user experience design expertise on IBM’s Smarter Cities campaign.
The outdoor advertising component — produced by the creative team at Ogilvy — was awarded the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes, as well as Clio Awards for Experiential/Engagement, Innovation and Design.
Ogilvy One
Experience design consultancy — London, UK — 2013
I was hired by the managing director to provide additional customer experience design expertise to teams working on a global web redesign for Land Rover, CX and UX initiatives for British Airways, as well as projects to improve dietary health for children for the Department of Health and Social Care.
Powa Technologies
Experience design — London, UK — 2013
I was engaged to design the end-to-end user experience for unicorn tech startup Powa Technologies’ mobile payment platform, praised by the British Prime Minister as, “A great British success story,” before it imploded in spectacular fashion, burning $200m of investor money while achieving nothing.
If only someone had mentioned early on that there was a flaw in their strategy…
Graze
Experience design consultancy — London, UK — 2014
I was hired by the co-founder and CTO of this beloved snack food company to advise on how experience design improvements could reduce choice paralysis and improve customer retention. I was also tasked with mentoring designers in their newly formed UX team.
Customers rate Graze as “great” on Trustpilot, which isn’t something I can take any credit for, but I can hope for guilt by association.
Luxury Watch Brand
CX consultancy — Geneva and London — 2014
I was contracted by the head of customer experience of arguably the most lauded luxury watch brand in the world to provide guidance on improving their already exceptional after-sales service experience.
Given the terms of the NDA I signed, I’d better leave it at that.
HSBC
CX consultancy — London, UK — 2014
I provided training on customer experience principles and processes to senior executives within HSBC. The project included developing customized tools, templates and worksheets to support CX initiatives across the retail banking side of the business.
Key takeaway — a bank is a heavily-regulated IT company that moves money around.
Telefonica Digital
Strategy and proposition development — London, UK — 2015
I was contracted by the head of product marketing to develop a model for stress-testing new digital proposition ideas for communications products.
The resultant set of principles, processes and tools was used to evaluate new projects, refine the direction of existing propositions and to support decision-making when considering potential acquisitions.
This project laid the intellectual train tracks that led me to write The Grid — my second book — two years later.
Pharmaceuticals Brand
CX strategy — New York — 2017
I advised on CX strategy, helping define the goals and roadmap for the program, and how it would integrate with existing business capabilities.
Year one results from the program saw impressive growth in the use of self-service channels and industry-leading satisfaction scores.
BrightInsight
Proposition and communications consultancy — San Jose, CA — 2018
Working directly with the CEO and marketing director, I helped BrightInsight sharpen their client pitch decks and product messaging in the run-up to their spin-off from their parent company, Flex — a $26bn tech innovation business. BrightInsight have since raised $30m+ to further develop their regulated IoT platform and attract an enviable roster of clients.
Artory
Startup pitch deck and communications consultancy — New York — 2018
Artory is a New York-based startup that uses blockchain technology to capture vetted provenance information about artworks and collectibles. I led the Methodical team to produce detailed business plans and pitch decks for prospective clients and investors.
Artory not only met their ambitious 2018 funding targets, they made headlines around the world after securing a landmark deal with Christie’s.
Nutrition Startup (Stealth)
Proposition development, conceptual experience design — Dublin, Ireland — 2019
I led the Methodical team tasked with refining the proposition and designing the multi-channel customer experience for an ambitious digital health and nutrition venture, led by a prominent Irish entrepreneur.
Any excuse and I’ll be back to Dublin.
Pharmaceuticals brand
Product strategy and experience design — Switzerland — 2019–20
Methodical partnered with the innovation team at a multi-billion dollar global pharma brand to refine and design their vision for an innovative digital health product.
I led the Methodical team whose work covered competitive analysis, product strategy, multi-channel experience design, conceptual UX/UI, and user testing.
I also attempted to eat my body weight in raclette cheese, and learned that “Confiture de la circulation” does not mean traffic jam in French.
Technology brand
Product and UX strategy — Silicon Valley — 2020
I led the Methodical team in reviewing and shaping the strategy for an ambitious new enterprise technology product from a $1bn technology company.
Iconic luxury brand
Customer experience strategy — Germany — 2020–2021
I led the Methodical team on this project working with a newly appointed Head of Customer Experience to define a global CX strategy that would achieve the triple crown: business growth, brand distinctiveness and a greater perception of value for the customer.
My most expensive client to date — their products are too good to resist!
Healthcare brand
Customer experience strategy — California — 2021–present
I am leading the Methodical team on this fascinating project to establish a CX strategy for a fast-growing healthcare brand well on their way to $1bn in annual revenue.
Consumer hardware / healthcare brand
Marketing strategy — New York — 2021–present
Working directly with the CEO, I am providing advice on brand, product and digital strategy to help bring a revolutionary non-drug treatment for anxiety and depression to market in 2022.