United Kingdom

Product Design

Graphic Design

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Motion Design

Branding and Identity Design

Design Operations

Content Design

Customer Experience (CX)

UX writing

Branding

Product Marketing

Growth Design

UX Research

Bachelor of Design

Sam Bazalo

Senior Product Designer

Portfolio

Design inspiration blog

Quantitative research

Prototyping

Qualitative research

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Critical-thinking

Empathy

Team player

Stakeholder management

Design systems

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Airtable

Asana

Axure

Canva

ChatGPT

Figma

Jira

Adobe Creative Suite

Adobe After Effects

Confluence

Linear

Typeform

Time management

Organisation skills

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Talk to people who've broken into the tech industry and learn their stories.

Breaking into tech

Learn the best ways to answer technical interview questions with frameworks

Acing technical interview questions

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

How to define and execute a successful launch and managing stakeholders expectations. (eg. MVP)

Launching new products or features

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

At Songkick, I have been an integral part of a small yet dynamic design team. I had the opportunity to mentor a fellow mid-level designer transitioning from a research background to honing their product design and solution delivery skills. We’ve also welcomed another talented mid-level designer with a strong visual background to the team and I’m excited to find ways to support her as she settles into the role. 

In my role as the lead designer within the B2B work stream, I’ve been designing products tailored for artists, artist managers, venues, and promoters. Notably, I contributed to the development of an event management platform and an event campaign marketing tool, driving innovation and user satisfaction.

In my role at Pledge, I played a pivotal part in the development and enhancement of products within the Platform and Data Insights teams. I helped establish a design system from the ground up for a rapidly evolving product and worked on core SaaS components such as Account settings, Onboarding, and Pricing plans. Additionally, I designed an emission calculations tool, serving as both a sales tool and a demonstration of the product's capabilities to prospective customers.

My work here primarily focused on the concept and solution phases of the design process, with significant pressure on time and quality. Due to limited available customer data and research, I relied on intuition and quickly developed expertise in freight carbon accounting. Collaborating closely with industry experts within the company, I ensured that our solutions effectively met user needs.

A special part of Xero was being able to draw inspiration from a globally distributed design team, while working within a tight-knit product team based in Wellington. Within this smaller team, I was able to develop my mentoring skills with more junior designers, this extended to the wider design team within our portfolio as well.

This environment allowed me to thrive. I strengthened my core design practice and my storytelling skills in order to have greater influence, ensuring the team was on the same page while keeping customer problems in focus. I was also able to explore wider curiosities in human behaviour, data and product strategy.

I lived in Lisbon for 5 months where I worked remotely as a freelance designer. I worked on a website refresh for a company called Creative Displays where my responsibilities were Visual Design, Interaction Design and Branding. I also completed some small projects for my previous employer Tradify and continued with the Pinehaven website management work mentioned below.

My time in Lisbon was cut short due to pandemic; however, I gained valuable experience handling the challenges that come with being self-employed. It was a great chance to develop my communication and task management skills while learning more about client relationship management. I have grown a deeper understanding of the value I can deliver while I have naturally had to become more business savvy when it comes to selling my abilities as a service.

With an ancient and unusable website, Pinehaven Garden Products online quote enquiries had completely dried up.

While sales were ticking over smoothly from other channels, the business was missing a massive opportunity to generate customer interest using a website which would be supported by digital marketing strategies.

I worked with the business to identify what it needed from its website and establish the project objectives.

These objectives were:
- Design and build a website with a modern look and feel, utilising the Pinehaven brand 
- Generate a higher frequency and quality of quote enquiries
- Achieve high performance in common metrics such as bounce rates and session times
- Create a frictionless quote enquiry experience
- Optimise search engine performance
- Utilise the Google Ad network to generate high-quality leads
- Allow the staff at Pinehaven to manage website content 

These objectives were met and most importantly there is now a healthy flow of quote enquiries.

I am continuing to passively manage the website and focus on areas such as SEO and post-purchase customer relationship management.

I found this role extremely rewarding and stimulating being so close to every step in the product development journey.

I was responsible for the complete product design process starting with identifying issues or developing early-stage concepts. I would then work collaboratively with product owners, researchers, sales, customers support and colleagues from other areas of the business to develop a well-rounded perspective on the problem. I created design artifacts such as sketches, wireframes, user journey diagrams, high fidelity designs and prototypes to define the solution.

I worked very closely with the engineering team to take the designs through to live product releases which required effective teamwork skills and a high-level understanding of the engineering environment.

My passion for social enterprise led me to apply my Product Design skills at Squawk Squad. This start-up engages New Zealanders with conservation by crowdfunding traps, saving birds and notifying users when pests are caught.

My role included various Product Design, Product Strategy and later on, Project Management activities to deliver new features and improvements to the responsive web application.

As of April 2020, we have empowered 1069 kiwis to contribute to this conservation effort, funding 258 traps across 4 separate conservation projects. These traps have caught over 6173 pests, giving our wildlife a fighting chance.

Throughout my time at DAN I became profficient with design activites such as concept sketching, prototyping, motion design, presenting work and delivering accurately specified design documents or working files. 

I have worked as an interaction designer on an ANZ internal banking software while contributing and crafting a large design system. I loved working in duos, teaming up with UX Strategists to solve complex business problems and fulfilling user needs. I also enjoyed learning how design systems can bring huge value to a business. 

Other projects have included:

Tourism New Zealand - Campaign design, platform UX/UI optimisation

Vodafone - Responsive Web, Android and iOS platform updates

Suncorp - Content design and testing of user comprehension

Internal practice development - Process optimisation, knowledge base contributions in areas such as benchmarking and motion design. 

I strive to think holistically and understand aspects outside of my practice, especially in relation to the client’s business and most importantly end users’ situation. For example, I have been heavily involved in supporting UX Strategists with activities such as usability testing, ideation workshops and user interviews. Being involved early in the discovery phase helps me better understand the bigger picture, and allows me to design impactful solutions.

Member in the design team behind the Jelly Bloom installation.

This was a great experience for me as my first job in a design studio where I saw how my skills I was developing at university could be sold as a service.

I worked on a two week Radio NZ digital presence ideation and research project as well as the Capital 150 celebrations involving projection mapping on parliament.

At Pinehaven Garden products, I was in charge of keeping all of the point of sale and promotional media up to date and on brand. I was also involved in hands on work such as customer service, carpentry, factory work, forklift driving and dispatch/delivery work, teaching me a lot about small business.

Sam Bazalo🇬🇧

About Sam Bazalo

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Sessions with Sam Bazalo