Andy Shanks

• 7 — Product Demos Created

The core technology had been created alongside a university and the company was looking for commercial traction to validate commercial strategy and support their next funding round but were struggling to articulate the use case and value to prospective industries and clients and build a pipeline of pilots.

I helped identify the value for different sectors and bring to life the vision for the product with a collection of industry case studies and product demo videos. I designed their web widget demo to set it apart from competitors with a better user experience and helped the company develop a roadmap and product strategy.

Seven demos were created, resulting in 10 client meetings and more after I left. The company was accepted into a prestigious accelerator with investment.

Co-founded the business and led product development through prototype to MVP to scalable product. Raised £1.2m in investment and grants, including over £500k in crowdfunding. Delivered over 550k hearing checks for users in 157 countries, featured by Apple. Achieved medical device certification, NHS and DHAF accreditation, and Cyber Essentials Plus.

Collaborated with the research team to scientifically validate the product’s value proposition.Built and delivered a strategic roadmap to test and support B2C and B2B commercialization strategies. Worked closely with the user research team to test ideas and iterate product development to meet user needs.

Built a highly insightful and flexible data analytics platform to inform user engagement, retention strategies, and B2B data reporting. Consulted with various stakeholders and specialist advisors to inform product development across hearing, audio design, audiology, behavioral science, and marketing.

Led the re-design project, gathered stakeholder requirements and fan feedback, personally delivered the UX design and hired a great designer to do the design, and worked with the production team to implement the design and scope the launch of the website.

I worked with my business partner to scratch an itch that we had: the troublesome problem of losing photos we had taken in our camera roll. The NINE app lets you organize your pictures into nine categories: things to do, see, buy, go to, watch, listen, and so on. Built for visual thinkers who use their camera as a way of remembering things they want to take action on, NINE lets you capture quickly, organize simply, and find easily.

After we launched the product to market, Apple featured it in the best new utility apps across 27 counties, helping it reach 250,000 users and still growing.

Owing to an NDA agreement, I can’t disclose much else except that I was highly involved in gathering requirements, designing the user experience, leading the development team, and providing ongoing support and improvement iterations.

Due to an NDA, I can’t disclose much else except the app is due to go into clinical trial after next round of funding, and that I played a crucial role in moving the product development forward along the roadmap.

Amazon Dash had just been released, and Peroni wanted to investigate what it would take to develop its own IoT button product. They wanted to give their users a way to ensure that whenever they ran out of good beer, whoever managed their online grocery shopping would replace it.

The button enabled users to connect to their WiFi and online grocery account and, when pressed, select the type of beer product they wanted. It had several LED states, a support app, and a website.

I managed and directed the project team, liaising with product design, project management, customers, and the client.

This project was delivered by Ideas Made, the digital product studio I founded.

I arranged a series of strategic and creative workshops to ideate a solution to the problem that over 50% of food in the UK is wasted. The answer was a web app powered by Google voice search that enabled users to speak the ingredients they had left in their cupboards and get quality recipe ideas in return so they could rescue the food from the bin. We also created a platform and community hub via a leaderboard to track how much food was being saved nationwide.

It was a large team across companies and several agencies with many legal and logistical challenges. I pushed through to launch the product successfully, spawning a whole new community of Food Rescuers for Sainsbury’s.