James Cooke

It is my pleasure to recommend James Cooke, the Founding Director and Head of Innovation at Hello Human. James has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership and strategic vision in developing and delivering innovative digital solutions across multiple industries, including Education, Agriculture, Fashion, Finance, and Sustainability. His expertise in overseeing the full product lifecycle—from strategic planning and scoping to execution—has led to the successful completion of numerous high-impact projects, such as the development of Australia’s first Baseline emissions tool for the agricultural sector and the creation of a groundbreaking “Componentised On-demand manufacturing platform” for the fashion industry. James is not only a skilled innovator but also a highly effective leader. His ability to inspire and guide teams, coupled with his strong stakeholder management and communication skills, has been instrumental in ensuring the success of complex, multifaceted projects. His deep understanding of user-centered design and product strategy, combined with his technical proficiency, makes him a formidable asset to any organization seeking to drive growth and innovation.

I had the pleasure of working with James during my almost 3 years with Hello Human. As a leader who empowers those around him, I was given the opportunity to not only enhance my craft, but lead as a designer. For organisations & potential clients looking for an inspiring design leader and visionary, who also happens to be an all-round awesome human, there's nobody I'd recommend more than James!

James is a great guy to work with. He keeps team spirits high and has the kind of personality that makes work enjoyable. He's extremely approachable and takes care of the people he manages. I'd see people in the hallways ask him for an opinion on something they were stuck on, and remember being quite impressed at his ability to quickly help them out and sort out the design. He has a knack for products too - highly knowledgeable about the latest and greatest - which for me as a product manager is super helpful because not only can you build something with him that looks great but also performs the job for the customer. Hopefully I get to work again with James in the future.

James and the Hello Human team, have been instrumental in bringing ideas to life with the 'human' touch. James is super easy to work with and his deep understanding of web development and technical expertise has played a pivotal role in exectuing the complexities of our website build and acheiveing a high performing website.

His ability to break down technical appplications and knowledge into easy to understand and actionable solutions has been a huge help in bringing the project to life.

Beyond his technical skills, his patient, collabarotive and pro-active approach has enabled our projects to run on time and on budget. Adding to that he is just an allround nice guy, and would highly recommend James and the Hello Human team.

I met James while taking my first gig in product management and long story short I credit my product, design, and innovation understanding to James and his team at Hello Human.

James is a generous coach who readily shares his experience in service of achieving the best outcomes. Although James is the Founder at Hello Human, he is a hands on lead without being overbearing, providing just the right amount expertise and direction to make his work and that of his team's stand out. James also has that rare ability to attract equally great minds to work with him.

To summarise, James is ridiculously smart, trustworthy, and motivated making him a lucrative asset for any organisation and/or community. I genuinely look forward to working with James, even when the work isn't great! I highly recommend working with James if you have the opportunity.

I’ve greatly enjoyed working with James on a number of projects for Hello Human. I appreciate working with someone who is as skilled on the tools as they are managing the project and team. I found James to be forward thinking, open, and easy to communicate and get along with. I would, without hesitation, recommend him and hope to work with him again in the future.

James has the ability to work at any altitude. If it's looking 30 years into the future at the logistics of manufacturing fast fashion or deep into the weeds building a digital electronic vendor declaration for cattle producers, he can do it all.

It's safe to say James knows how to build beautiful things. He has a knack for finding the true user needs and always builds something customers love and clients love him for it.

I've had the pleasure of being mentored by James for 4 years, where he exposed me to many opportunities that I wouldn't have got at any other company. He guided me through deep 3-hour research trips in rural Australia, interactive 3D isometric maps that showcase a user's journey, a bespoke ecommerce website that integrated directly with the factory, a design system for a leading trading platform, and much more.

This generosity with his time and wealth of knowledge has shown to be a catalyst for my career, many of my successes after my time at Hello Human stem back to my experience there.

I was fortunate enough to work for James at Hello Human and value this experience highly. He created a fun and uniquely collaborative, respectful, friendly, and equal culture where you worked with James rather than for him, and that allowed us to work as a true team to deliver informed and innovative digital products and services.

James understands people and technology incredibly well, he is a very skilled UX designer, developer and strategic thinker never short of vision and with a lot of experience that I was able to tap into. I developed my own skills from working with James, but more than his skills, James is a great human – I'd recommend anyone who has the chance to work with James to take up that opportunity, and I'd myself look forward to working with him again in the future.

JC is one of that designers you really want in your team: Inspiring, open-minded, a strong communicator and knows where to buy that delicious chewing gum that everybody loves after lunch! During our time together at Vodafone Australia I could see a really reflective and organised guy. During our workshops, he provided the unique ability to bridge the gaps between design, human factors, design thinking, engineering, and business. He reveals the coherence between disciplines and insights in a way so they become much clearer to us all, and he never fails to perform to his utmost

Working with James Cooke was a great experience. As a senior developer, I collaborated with him on various client and in-house projects, and he consistently showed strong leadership and a clear vision for the product. His ability to guide the team while balancing technical challenges and business needs made a huge impact on our success. James's focus on communication and teamwork ensured we were always moving in the right direction, and his approach to problem-solving was both practical and innovative. I’d highly recommend him for any leadership role.