Dina Smith-Hayes

About

I love building world-class, delightful products, and helping real people get what they need done. My passion lies in scaling design systems and team ops, and creating design communities.

With 10+ years of experience as a product and visual designer, I focus on merging empathy with data to build thoughtful, impactful, and accessible experiences. I love working across the entire project lifecycle, from discovery, research and prototyping, to delivery, optimization, and growth. I’ve worked in ecommerce, education, and fintech, and love crafting stories in B2B and B2C settings.

I’m a self-starter and a mentor, and am really passionate about fostering creative environments for my teams. I strive to unlock efficiency and creativity by scaling processes, using new technology, and advocating for sustainable growth.

I’m a cat mom, love to cook, and enjoy creating through embroidery in my spare time.

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Focused on all things POS (Point of Sale)

Sole growth designer at this hypergrowth company providing business bank accounts to entrepreneurs. I led improvements of the onboarding funnel, making document and information submission easier for users.

Improved conversion by 8%/month with strategic design recommendations; worked end-to-end to deliver user insights, high-craft UI, and testing roadmaps.
Shortened account approval from 4 days to 3 by partnering with PM, data, eng, copywriters, and user researchers to improve UX on mobile.
Designed a new ID verification feature by using Intercom’s chatbot to receive and request documents; reduced Compliance overhead by 66%.
Conducted weekly user interviews and A/B tests to gain insights. Leveraged insights to improve existing user flows and build an improvement roadmap.
Maintained a data-informed approach through research, user testing, and performance monitoring
Led design workshops to define our vision and values. Advocated for design-led thinking in crits, product reviews, and non-design settings.
Organized and supported monthly eng/design Lunch & Learns.

Worked with product leaders and global industry stakeholders to lead the end-user product strategy of this enterprise-level SaaS company. I improved team ops and introduced quality control to ship accessible, scalable features.

Regularly shipped product improvements for 20+ global clients, simplifying extremely complex UX with data-driven design recommendations.
Managed and supported 2 designers through daily stand-ups, weekly 1:1s, mentoring, product critiques, conflict resolution, performance reviews.
Defined product strategy for new features by leveraging stakeholder feedback sessions and a human-centric approach.
Laid the foundation for design team values, created OKRs and roadmaps for the team in partnership with the Director of Engineering.
Improved team ops: established ways of working with cross-functional teams. Set up project lifecycle processes: project briefs, testing criteria, design-to-dev handoff processes, knowledge sharing workshops.
Overhauled a 400+ component library for scalability; created documentation for multiple platforms, tech stacks, and client solutions.
Co-founded/facilitated Viziya’s Women’s ERG, providing community and resources in a male-dominated industry.

Employee 68 at a then-start-up/now-hypergrowth B2C SaaS company. I contributed to every part of the marketing team’s domain, leading to the company’s IPO in 2019. I maintained a user-centric approach to deliver responsive, accessible, and beautiful designs.

Improved blog performance: pages/session +300%, time/page +200%, subscription rate +50%. Redesigned the blog through data-driven research, prioritized improving accessibility and content adoption.
Created an email design system to increase product adoption: improved CTR from 5% to 42%. Email production time went from 4 hours to 35 mins.
Created a culture manifesto: built a working prototype, delineated brand guidelines, created illustrations and videos, designed physical swag for the HR team to use in-office
Launched a culture manifesto site used across the entire org. Stakeholders included the CPO, Director of Engineering, and Talent Acquisition team.
Saved 4hrs/week on design production time by creating templates and implementing design reviews and knowledge-sharing processes.
Using Hubspot, created a new email design system to increase customer engagement and product adoption: increased the CTR from 5% to as much as 42%, on average
Delivered high-quality visuals and UX across website updates, SEO campaigns, email comms, social media, and copywriting.
Used Google Analytics and HotJar to identify user pain points, redesign landing pages; built a testing roadmap to continuously improve UX.

Worked directly with clients to bring their ideas to life across ecommerce and education industries. I led projects end-to-end, focusing on accessibility and market saturation. I also supported office budgeting, business goal definition, and project proposals.

Boosted ad performance by 5% with effective SEO, AdWords campaigns.
Led 8 projects end-to-end, leveraging user interviews and data to build technical requirements and provide scalable design solutions.
Crafted high-quality deliverables for the entire product lifecycle, from discovery, research and prototyping, to delivery and optimization.
Provided content direction and wrote copy for websites, landing pages, paid ads, and short videos. Also, tested ad copy based on performance in Google Ad Manager.
Used best practice HTML and CSS to update webpages
Reduced feedback cycles by 5+ hours/week by creating a tracking system. Crafted mobile-first designs and QA’d using best practice HTML/CSS.
Used Google Analytics to monitor projects pre- and post-launch, proposed solutions to improve performance post-launch.

Design mentor

May 2020 - Current | Fully remote

Supporting designers is something I am privileged to do. It’s important to me to be able to encourage growth and inspiration, providing feedback and guidance that suits their communication style and career goals.

Introducing IDV at NorthOne

March - April 2022

I helped users get to their NorthOne bank account 2 days faster by introducing an ID verification flow during onboarding. We kept it lean, using Intercom's chatbot to request and receive confidential documents. 98% conversion rate with >1% churn.

Renewing Prometheus' design systems

May - August 2021

After a large acquisition, I unified 3 separate design systems into 1 accessible and sustainable component library. Tested, iterated, and annotated for better adoption across the entire product org.

Project managing Wave's 2018 rebrand

April - September 2018

I led a team of 14 marketers to complete the biggest company rebrand to date, unifying the corporate site, social media, and all marketing assets. I also rebranded the blog, social media, and email comms.

Sid's Deli

May - June 2015

Brought a new restaurant's identity to life with lively illustrations, menu and restaurant signage. I provided documentation and templates so the client could make website and social media updates.

Design and analytics

Figma • Sketch • After Effects • Axure • Bootstrap • Fullstory • Google Analytics • HTML/CSS • HotJar • Invision • Lookback • Loom • Miro • Mixpanel • Photoshop & Illustrator • Usertesting.com • Wordpress

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