Based in Metro Detroit.
I help organizations modernize products, improve collaboration, unlock innovation, and turn ideas into solutions people actually use.
Hi, I’m Phillip James,
a Product Experience, AI & Digital Transformation Leader.
Throughout my career, I’ve led product experience, transformation, and innovation initiatives across healthcare, automotive, financial services, enterprise software, AI platforms, and entrepreneurial ventures. Along the way, I’ve launched products, secured patents, built teams, modernized platforms, and helped organizations navigate change while staying focused on the people they’re building for.
The projects below represent different chapters of the same story—exploring new ideas, solving complex problems, and helping turn what’s possible into what’s next.
Ally Financial
Dealer Dash
Transforming the Dealer Workspace
Led the transformation of Dealer Dash from a static collection of links (link farm!) into a customizable, AI-enabled experience built around dealer workflows. The redesigned platform introduced conversational AI, intelligent summaries of reports and documentation, personalized dashboard configurations, and embedded application widgets that allowed dealers to move directly from insight to action without navigating across multiple systems.
Ally Financial
Ally.ai
Turning Generative AI Into Practical Business Value
Led product experience design efforts supporting Ally’s internal AI platform, helping associates move beyond AI experimentation and into meaningful adoption through improved productivity, knowledge access, guided prompting, and workflow efficiency. The platform ultimately achieved active usage by nearly 30% of the company’s employees.
Ally Financial
SmartAuction
Reimagining the Future of Dealer Experiences
Contributed to long-range product strategy efforts exploring the future of dealer workflows, AI-assisted experiences, digital modernization, and the evolving needs of automotive retailers. While much of the vision focused on where the industry was heading, some of the most meaningful improvements came from solving immediate pain points—starting with placing inventory search directly on the homepage so dealers could get where they needed to go faster.
UnitedHealthCare
Point of Care Assist
Bringing Better Insights Into Clinical Decision Making
Directed a world-class product experience and brand strategy for a $60 million healthcare initiative designed to deliver actionable patient insights directly within provider workflows, helping clinicians make more informed decisions at the point of care. This groundbreaking initiative for UnitedHealthcare added real-time patient information — including clinical, pharmacy, labs, prior authorization, and cost transparency — to existing electronic medical records (EMRs) by integrating directly into 3rd party platforms and surfacing in the workflow when meaningful.
Optum
Link
Simplifying Healthcare Access
Contributed to the evolution of a healthcare platform serving more than one million users by enabling medical providers to complete and track multiple types of transactions in a single environment without having to constantly enter the same information, resulting in significant time savings and simultaneously connect members with their health care data.
Optum
Cheetos
Blending Physical & Digital Experiences
Tasked directly by the CIO with finding a way to bring healthcare into people’s living rooms, I conceptualized, led, and designed Cheetos (project codename). Partnering with Microsoft, we created an innovative experience that blended physical and digital interactions, exploring how emerging technologies could make healthcare information more accessible, engaging, and relevant to consumers.
Entrepreneurial Project
Board Butler®
From Idea to Patent to Product
Invented, manufactured, and launched a product designed to solve a long-standing problem within the board gaming industry. What began as a Kickstarter campaign supported by more than 4,500 backers worldwide has since grown into a multi-patented product with nearly 100,000 individual clips shipped.
Entrepreneurial Project
Sideshow Swap!™
Creating, Funding & Licensing an Original Game
Co-created and launched an original card game property from concept through production, successfully funding the project on Kickstarter before licensing the intellectual property to The United States Playing Card Company / Bicycle Games. By applying proven user experience principles throughout development—including extensive playtesting and iteration—the game became exceptionally balanced, easy to learn, and designed to build toward a delightful finale every time it is played.
Entrepreneurial Project
REFLEX Control™
Gaming Hardware Innovation
Co-created and helped market an innovative gaming controller recognized at E3 and presented to industry leaders including Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Activision. The experience created by replacing one joystick with a trackball was famously described by a Sony Computer Entertainment executive as “an unfair competitive advantage” over players using traditional controllers.
Entrepreneurial Project
Greet-o-matic®
Helping a Young Inventor Bring an Idea to Life
Mentored my son’s invention from concept through commercialization, helping guide product development, patent protection, crowdfunding, manufacturing, and retail sales while teaching the innovation process along the way. The journey led to multiple television appearances, including a winning appearance on the Steve Harvey Show.
Optum
Optum Assist
Connecting People With Critical Support Resources
Helped design and evolve healthcare experiences focused on connecting individuals with care resources, support services, and personalized assistance during important moments in their healthcare journey. A milestone for the organization, this was the first application released under Optum’s new brand identity and experience framework.
General Motors
Mobile Showrooms
Bringing Automotive Experiences to Mobile
Helped design and launch some of General Motors’ earliest consumer and dealer-facing mobile applications during the emergence of smartphones and tablets, introducing new digital experiences across Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick brands and generating hundreds of thousands of downloads within months of launch.
Chevrolet
Country Music Calendar & Matchmaker
Helping Shape Digital Experiences
Contributed to digital marketing, CRM, and interactive experience initiatives supporting one of the world’s most recognizable automotive brands while helping establish standards for large-scale customer engagement programs. Featured here are two examples: the Chevy Country Music Calendar, the first time the long-running print calendar received a digital companion experience, and Chevy Matchmaker, an experience I conceived, designed, and developed to help former Saturn owners discover equivalent Chevrolet vehicles after the Saturn brand was discontinued.
DXdetroit
Newman/Haas Racing
Fueling Fan Engagement Beyond the Track
Partnered with one of North America’s most successful open-wheel racing organizations to create digital experiences that strengthened fan engagement, expanded brand reach, and supported sponsorship initiatives, often reaching 15 million or more viewers a month. Led by actor Paul Newman and racing legend Carl Haas, the team featured many of the most recognizable drivers in IndyCar and Champ Car, including Andretti, Fittipaldi, Bourdais, and Rahal.
Want to know more?
These projects are only a small part of the story. Behind each one are the lessons, experiences, and perspectives that ultimately shaped me… into me.