Meet Warren
Chief Experience Officer & Founder
Warren founded ELSE back in 2010 and has two roles. Firstly to lead ELSE and develop its offer and culture. Secondly, he works on our strategy and innovation engagements, helping our clients chart customer experiences with a focus on design effectiveness and future value – he remains very involved in client work.
Experience
Warren is a strategic and conceptual thinker with a deep background in UX and interaction design. He has 25+ years of experience under his belt and an approach rooted in understanding the intersection between humans, technology and business,
During this time, Warren has worked both client and consultancy-side, he held roles at Yell, PA Consulting, Oyster, Framfab, LBi, and Universal Music prior to establishing ELSE. However, it was in the very early days of the internet that Warren made a career for himself, applying everything he’d learned studying Product Design at Brunel University, to the then newly emerging discipline of digital.
He is listed in the BIMA 100 (the UK’s most influential people in digital and tech), he’s a mentor for the Design Business Association and he has also been a returning judge at the Taiwan Excellence and Innovation Awards, a BIMA100 judge, and a Design Week judge/chair.
Having a passion for the links between design education and industry, Warren has been working with undergraduates and post-grad students since 1998, setting up intern schemes and graduate programs pretty much wherever he’s worked, taking great pride in developing promising talent.
During this time he has also been a visiting lecturer and external course advisor on the Digital Design & Branding MSc and Design, Strategy & Innovation MA at Brunel University as well as a guest lecturer at Cambridge University for their MBA.
Outside ELSE
Warren’s a busy father of three, but when he’s not stood by a touchline at the weekends, he’s either out riding his mountain bike, practising his bass, or buying more vinyl. He’s also keen on strength training, which means moving heavy objects around.
After several trips to Austin, Texas he’s also become a BBQ nerd, doing 20-hour brisket cooks, smoking ribs, making hot sauce and wings and generally over-feeding people.
Kind words by clients & colleagues
“The digital world advances so rapidly that the talents needed to guide and create brilliantly in it have a hard time keeping pace. There are a very few who genuinely set that pace and who have those talents and the intelligence to use them wisely so that they benefit us all. Warren Hutchinson is, in my experience, among those very few. He is a wise, resourceful, skilful and creative, with a rare humility that makes it a pleasure to collaborate with him.”
Michael Wolff, Michael Wolff & Company
“I deeply respect Warren’s creative but also emotional skills, he can come to meet what you need mentally, he builds bridges and is just down-to-earth practical even though you know he’s got a team who is ahead of you, he gives you a humble style that welcomes your ideas too. If you gotta work with a designer, pick a man who can pull together and support daily a talented team like this“
Dave Bruno, UBS Innovation
“Warren is right. Pay attention to him. It’ll be worth it.“
Rob Lawrence, Chief Creative Officer at Accenture, CXO at Wunderman
