United States

BA in Journalism and Mass Communications

Sam Hankins

Principal Product Designer

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

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

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

Managing burnout

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Keeping your sanity, career growth and job satisfaction.

Surviving a merger or acquisition

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

Getting the most out of my internship

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

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

Fostering a good team culture

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

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

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

Presenting your work with impact

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

Supporting the Editorial Tools team as part of larger product and engineering initiative launching a more performant audience experience. For Coral, my work has focused on in-depth user research on the commenting behavior of SB Nation commenters to inform future product needs. Every other month, I deliver knowledge shares to the product design team covering research tools and workflows, and advanced Figma techniques.

Onboarded and managed a team of 20+ of mentors en route to the program’s highest job placement rate. Developed hard and soft skills rubrics for evaluating prospective mentors and reviewed portfolios as part of mentor hiring team. Shifted mentorship focus to coaching recent grads on their career goals, interview skills, personal brand, and portfolio refinements.

Owned design process for launch of 3 new engagement formats: Q&A, Ratings & Reviews, and Live Chat. Established pattern library for moderation and admin experience enabling teammates to support design efforts. Collaborated with engineering to scope and design multi-site management experience for large SaaS clients. Teamed with developers to create flexible audience-facing design system allowing for client brand expression. Led research and design for post-launch feature enhancements for SB Nation communities. Partnered with Coral's Director of Engineering to update Jira workflow pipelines and create product discovery templates to improve team alignment during rapid growth phase.

Owned design process for launch of Coral’s safety-first commenter, moderator, and admin experience. Conducted user research and usability testing to understand moderator needs and inform product direction. Crafted accessible designs optimized for internationalization. Collaborated with the Product Owner, Lead Engineer and Tech Lead to define, prioritize and scope roadmap and sprints.

I worked directly with students in 30 minute 1-on-1 video sessions and via Slack to support them on their journey to becoming product and user experience designers. The curriculum is project-based and each week we focus on a different area of the UX process, visual design and front-end development (HTML/CSS/JavaScript). As a Bloc alum myself, I place heavy emphasis on making sure my students understand the value of each step of the design process, how each of these steps relates to one another, and also sharing with them my own learnings from applying what Bloc taught me to my own work IRL at Mozilla and Vox Media.

Twice a week, I hosted design critique group sessions reviewing student portfolios and projects giving in-depth feedback and action items to help them take their work to the next level.

Additionally, I coached recent grads during their job search by providing in-depth portfolio reviews and conducting mock interviews.

Past students now employed at companies like Microsoft, Apple, CarMax, Tailwind, Fidelity Investments, Franklin Energy Services, and Flickr.

The Coral Project was founded as a collaboration between the Mozilla Foundation, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

We are creating open-source tools and resources for publishers of all sizes to build better communities around their journalism. Talk, our commenting and moderation platform, is currently used in 26 newsrooms worldwide in 13 different countries. Current clients include: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The Intercept, IGN, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Short version: I get to talk to commenters and comment moderators to figure out ways design can solve the issues around trolling and harassment, and also bring more diverse voices to many of the important conversations of today.

Nitty gritty stuff:

- Write surveys, user interview and user testing scripts; conduct remote and in-person interviews/usability tests; and develop prototypes using InVision, UsabilityHub and HTML/CSS/Javascript;

- Analyze responses and findings from user research and testing and translate into deliverables shared during weekly team-wide design/research review presentations;

- Iterate on feedback from usability testing;

- Breakdown features into value-focused user stories to advise project and tech leads on feature scope for experimentation and testing under Lean UX approach;

- Produce high-level and in-depth user flows for commenter and moderator behavior;

- Create low/high fidelity wireframes using Sketch and Figma; 

- Develop and maintain design system, and custom theming scheme for client brand customization; and,

- Collaborate with developers in agile environment working in one week sprint cycles by providing comprehensive design documentation.

• Completed 500+ hour project-based online bootcamp under mentorship of an
accomplished UX professional while working full-time;
• Crafted user surveys and conducted interviews for creation of personas, user
stories, user requirements and user flows;
Built and distributed prototypes (clickable and html/css/javascript) of iOS app and
responsive web apps;
Conducted user testing and iterated based on feedback; and,
Created and developed brand identities - brand name, logo and style guide.

Led development of school-wide diversity programs to build inclusive educational environment requiring collaboration with multiple departments.

Recruited and advised international applicants for LL.M. in American Legal Studies program utilizing email marketing, regular email correspondence, and one-on-one telephone and Skype counseling sessions.

Reviewed applications and conduct interviews of LL.M. applicants as member of admissions committee.

Counseled and supported LL.M. students on all academic and personal matters.

Contributed to the planning of study abroad programs to Havana, Cuba and Pisa, Italy.

Developed responsive website utilizing html, css, and javascript for LL.M. USA, a consortium of 9 top-tier American law schools recruiting foreign trained attorneys for enrollment in Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs in the United States.

Counseled students on all academic, extracurricular, and personal matters with open door availability and maintaining strict confidentiality

Managed and advised over 40 student organizations on event planning, budgeting, leadership development, and University policies and procedures.

Created multiple academic advising presentations and overhauled the content, layout, and design of supporting advising guides to raise awareness of graduation requirements and academic programs.

Advised Communications department on creation of marketing materials and website content detailing student programs and services.

Planned school-wide diversity programs requiring budgeting, contracting, promoting, and coordinating with faculty, law school departments, and student groups.

Recruited prospective law students for Gonzaga at various on and off-campus law, graduate school, and career fairs across the country.

Presented on diversity and the law school admissions process to multicultural and pre-law student groups.

Introduced the regular usage of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and blogs) to Gonzaga Law’s admissions marketing strategy to further engage potential applicants.

Research and draft decisions for disputes presented to the Seattle Human Rights Commission and Seattle Office of Civil Rights.

Research municipal and constitutional law issues relating to draft legislation and city actions.

Served as a representative of Gonzaga by leading tours for prospective students and corresponded with prospective students during the law school application and decision making process.

Presented to local area high school and college students exposing them to possibilities in a legal career.

Sam Hankins🇺🇸

About Sam Hankins

Expertise

Sessions with Sam Hankins