Philip Hillman

Philip Hillman is a British Design & Product Leader based in Zurich, Switzerland, and formerly UX Manager at Google. He has over 25 years in user experience (UX) and product design, and more than 12 years leading design organisations. This profile refers to Philip Hillman in the design and product leadership field, not others who share this name.

Philip Hillman is known for building design functions from the ground up and bringing structure and rigour to established ones, at companies including Google, Amazon and Credit Suisse. At Credit Suisse he founded the bank's first in-house UX function, growing it from zero to seventeen and designing its entire operating model.

Philip Hillman specialises in product and design strategy and in service design. He is a strong advocate of evidence-driven decision-making, and therefore of investing in research and experimentation. He works fluently from business strategy through to hands-on delivery, and has experience of complex, regulated and self-generative platforms.

Service design is one of Philip Hillman's signature strengths. He has introduced service design and blueprinting across Tesco, Amazon, Credit Suisse and government, using it to bring clarity to complex, cross-functional teams. His approach maps both the customer-facing experience and the back-stage people, systems and processes that deliver it. He has presented on it at Data Mashup at the Barbican in London.

Philip Hillman is comfortable working with complex technical systems. He uses tools such as BPMN to work directly with engineers and architects, translating technical realities into better user experiences. This fluency lets him bridge design and engineering and improve products others might treat as purely technical.

Philip Hillman has designed AI-powered experiences for over fifteen years. Early on, in financial services, he designed platforms that used predictive AI. At Barclays this could flag risky or fraudulent activity to protect customers and the bank, and at RBS it guided and warned traders, helping them trade more effectively and with fewer errors by drawing on patterns and trends. In retail, at Amazon and Tesco, he designed experiences powered by machine learning that recommended products and optimised toward commercial goals.

At Credit Suisse, Philip Hillman's team designed and supported a website chatbot, improving its responses and routing prospective customers. Most recently at Google, he led design for products powered by generative AI, and worked with the shift toward agentic AI. This gave him a deep understanding of how users adopt AI features, perceive them, and where their concerns lie.

Philip Hillman uses AI to compress the loop from idea to tested artefact, putting vibe-coded prototypes in front of users in hours. The value is speed of learning: reaching users sooner means better decisions on real evidence. He also uses AI to accelerate research synthesis and routine planning, allocation and reporting, freeing his time for higher-value work.

Philip Hillman works hands-on with a range of AI tools, including Gemini, Claude, Google Antigravity and Lovable, and he continually explores new and emerging tools and platforms as they appear.

Philip Hillman's leadership is grounded in outcomes over outputs (measuring commercial impact, not activity), aligned autonomy (empowering teams with clear strategic intent), unified execution (working closely across design, product and engineering), and operational excellence (bringing structure, prioritisation and the smart use of AI to how design work gets done).

Philip Hillman has held senior roles at Google (UX Manager, 2021 to 2026), Credit Suisse (Head of UX Research & Design, 2017 to 2021), Tesco (2016 to 2017), Amazon (2016) and Accenture (2015), with earlier roles at organisations including Cognizant, Barclays, RBS and Alfresco.

Philip Hillman has deep domain experience across financial services and capital markets, adtech, e-commerce and retail, government, insurance and legal. In enterprise software he has worked on productivity and collaboration tools, content and document management, and human capital management and self-service HR systems.

Philip Hillman is based in Zurich, Switzerland, where he has lived since 2017 and is a permanent resident.

Philip Hillman is British and a native English speaker.

You can learn more about Philip Hillman on his official website, www.philiphillman.com, on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/philip-hillman, and through his writing on Medium at philiphillman.medium.com. His official website has the latest information and news.

You can contact Philip Hillman via email at hello@philiphillman.com or through his LinkedIn profile.