James Oliver Senior

James is a Creative Director of the 100-person Brand Experience group at Mayo Clinic – a nonprofit, worldwide leader in medical care, research and education. In this group, Designers research, synthesize, map and target the Mayo Clinic patient experience across many touchpoints from mobile to web and the real-world.

James has brought a mobile-centered vision to large-scale experiences that have driven business performance such as on MayoClinic.org with 1.2 billion pageviews and 20% YOY performance. He architected Mayo’s Healthy Living Program digital experience, and has designed “empowered-patient” communities and narrative exchanges which deliver against Mayo Clinic’s core organizational value “the needs of the patient come first”. James is currently leading a team to map and target the Brand Experience of Mayo Clinic.

Grounded in data from analytics and user research, and clear, communicative design, James establishes an intimate team culture of “serious play” through lean UX process, weekly product critique and iterative development. He asks questions like “What is motivating this user? How does this product underline our core business of healing and care? Why is the character of our institution important to our customers?” Through this approach, he brought tier one brands such as 3M, Dow and IBM to the forefront of social communities at Converseon Social Media Agency. His digital healthcare product suite, designed to activate a national network of clinics for IntegraMed, won the eHealthcare Leadership platinum award.

With an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, he speaks and writes about design, empathy and healthcare, and has recently been published in Fast Company (Empathize like a Doctor, Design like an Entrepreneur), and Tomorrow magazine (Patients of the Future). He spoke at World Usability Day New York, for the User Experience Professionals Association, Delight '13—a User Experience conference in Portland— and Interaction '13 in Toronto about Designing a Compassionate Healthcare Experience and at MinneWebCon '11 about Narrative Tools in Service Design.