Jonathon Toon

Jonathon Toon

Software Designer & Coach in Canterbury, New Zealand

Work Experience

2023 — Now
Remote

Providing designers and creative individuals career mentorship and advice on how to level up their skills, navigate ambiguity, develop a bias for impact, and create products that people love.

2024 — 2024
Japan / Remote

Operating as a fractional Director of Design, focused on the following aspects:

  • Supporting new and existing product directors, and their reporting product managers/product marketers, to develop strategic priorities.

  • Mentoring 4 designers based on their individual challenges and needs. Subjects included storytelling / narrative development, user research, stakeholder management and visual design craft.

2023 — 2024
Japan / Remote

As product director of a new business unit, reporting to the Chief of Product, I led two product teams while continuing to provide functional guidance to a team of designers.

Moneytree Business

  • Led a scrappy cross-functional product team comprising designers, engineers, product marketers, and product managers.

  • Mentored team members through a three-month product discovery process, which encompassed conducting customer interviews, performing market research, and formulating pricing strategies.

  • Guided the team in synthesizing insights and crafting visionary narratives for presentation to company leadership and board members.

  • Directed the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) over a three-month period, transitioning from a beta phase to a full launch with subscriptions managed through Stripe.

Growth Team

  • Ran a collaborative growth team consisting of product managers, designers, engineers, and enterprise marketerss.

  • Mapped the entire lead acquisition funnel for enterprise customers to identify institutional bottlenecks in messaging, process, and workflows.

  • Employed the rigorous prioritization frameworks to objectively seek out improvements based on reach and impact.

  • Redesigned key landing pages and introduced directional chatbots to guide leads towards answering questions as quickly as possible.

  • Implemented a self-serve product funnel, providing potential customers with a limited-time test environment to try out Moneytree’s LINK API.

2021 — 2023
Japan / Remote

Returned to the company after a two year hiatus to lead and grow a new design function, comprised of remote designers working horizontally across the organization.

  • Established new standards for hiring and evaluation.

  • Led the recruitment for new design talent end-to-end.

  • Introduced the organization's first career rubric for designers.

  • Coached individuals while producing standards and process for conducting user testing.

  • Guided designers through creating a brand new mobile experience for Japan's second biggest bank.

  • Incepted new product discovery squads to validate new areas of the Japanese financial market.

2021 — 2021
Remote

While reporting to the COO, led a remote team of product and brand designers to make continuous and automated software testing accessible to all.

2020 — 2020
Remote

First designer at the company following a reorganization and pivot in strategy. Initially reporting to the Director of Product, followed by the COO.

  • Constructed and executed a new skills assessment process for design candidates.

  • Hired a remote team of designers from the ground up.

  • Instrumented a robust first-two-weeks onboarding processes for new hires.

  • Led user research initiatives to inform company strategy and road map prioritization.

  • Introduced and led strategic product changes to drive measurable growth.

  • Led a redesign of the company's brand identity.

  • Responsible for the end-to-end product design process: strategy, visual design, analytics etc.

  • Regularly collaborated with senior staff across engineering, customer success and sales (across North America, Europe and APAC) to ensure alignment.

2016 — 2019
Tokyo, Japan / Remote

Leading product teams to create financial products in multiple markets. Focused mostly on platform growth of the Moneytree financial eco-system.

2015 — 2016
Tokyo, Japan

Initiated, researched and launched new product initiatives in-line with the company's pivot from a mobile centric retailer to a in-store payment solutions service.

2014 — 2015
San Francisco, CA

Small scrappy team designed, built and shipped a new mobile application from Xero focused on helping employers communicate with their employees more effectively.

2012 — 2014
Menlo Park, CA

Worked across Facebook Messenger, Photos and Feed. For Web, iOS and Android.

2012 — 2012
Wellington, New Zealand

Tutorial aid for a class of 30 students, on the subject of Design Psychology.

2012 — 2012
Wellington, New Zealand

Swiss army knife in training. Production Designer and Front End Engineer on projects for Google, FedEx and EDF.

2009 — 2012
Wellington, New Zealand

Branding and web jobs around the Design and Architecture faculty of the University.

2009 — 2011
Web Designer at The Alchemist Design & Print
Wellington, New Zealand

Design and code. Working on Wordpress themes.

Education

2009 — 2012
Wellington, New Zealand

Computational and Interaction design, Critical Thinking, Design Theory and Japanese.

Contact

GitHub
Twitter

Side Projects

2020

An instant grid-based pinboard for note taking in your browser.

2017

Tweet quickly from the desktop without any distractions.

Features

2011
Visual Music on New Zealand Pro Design

A project created during the second year of University entitled "The Nature of Living" was given a single page spread in the #111 issue of Pro Design.