DesignStrategyGrowth

I help companies address the messy middle

I'm Jody Hankinson. I tune a room, make conversations smarter, decisions saner, and experiences that are more than the sum of their parts. I guide teams to grounded, constructive action.

+30%qualified leads from a conversational AI redesign

for a regulated review process, using an AI tool I took from zero to one

$700M+in sales volume during the beta of a B2B commerce platform

+58%NPS after redesigning a regulated annuities customer portal

Who I work with

Growth is change.

Companies change fast, and the hard part is bringing people along. I align teams on ideas that grow businesses: I establish a hypothesis, then iterate quickly with collaborators using prototypes, user research and business narratives.

Your product grew faster than its experience

I restructure experiences around the jobs your users are trying to do, so the product scales with you.

Design isn't tied to the numbers

I start with a business hypothesis and measure against it. Without ROI, design can't earn its seat at the table.

AI is on the roadmap, but the experience isn't

I design AI products people trust: conversation design, human-in-the-loop workflows and the guardrails that manage risk.

You're a founder turning an idea into a product

I help define the concept, value proposition and customer experience, then validate them before you spend on a build.

Services

Senior design strategy, scoped to what you actually need.

Every engagement is with me directly — no hand-offs to junior staff. Pick a focused project or bring me in as an ongoing partner.

01 · Lead the change

Fractional leadership & design strategy

For founders and growing companies with a small design team, or none yet, I step in as your part-time head of design and strategist.

We start with the business itself: who you serve and what you offer. Then I lead the hands-on work, from user research and journeys to rapid prototypes. Where it helps, I establish the methods and design standards your team keeps using after I step back.

What you get

A steady hand in leadership conversations: clearer debates, saner decisions and next steps everyone owns
Role clarity across craft, communication, collaboration and business
A Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas that sharpen your concept and offer
Rapid prototypes tested with real users
A prioritized roadmap tied to revenue or cost

Proof: I doubled a digital agency's design team and expanded its West Coast operations through staffing and capacity planning.

02 · Align the people

Service blueprints & workshops

For leaders who need every team to see the same picture. I map the people, process, systems and technology behind your customer experience, then facilitate and craft solutions.

What you get

A service blueprint built on persona pairs — each customer paired with the employee who serves them
Friction points and opportunity spaces, ranked by impact
An in-person or remote workshop that turns findings into roadmap items

Proof: For Charles Schwab, I ran rapid service design sessions for the TD Ameritrade client migration.

03 · Change how work gets done

AI experience design

For companies adding AI to a product or an internal workflow. I treat AI as iterative: ship a focused first release, learn from real use, then refine. I design the conversation, the information architecture beneath it and the dashboards your team uses to track and maintain it once it ships.

What you get

Conversation design, prompt strategy and human-in-the-loop workflows, refined release by release
Dashboard design for tracking performance and maintaining the experience over time
User research that tests how people understand and trust the AI before and after launch

Proof: Conversational AI lifted qualified leads 30% and cut cost per lead by a third. A heavily regulated AI tool cut a 40-hour process to about four.

How I work

Name the change. Bring people with you. Make it stick.

HypothesisWe name the change the business is betting on, and what we'd need to see to believe it's working.
Iterate togetherRapid prototypes, sketch sessions, user maps and ecosystem diagrams, made with your team so they own the change instead of receiving it.
MeasureResearch, analytics and frontline insight from sales and support show whether the change is sticking, tied back to revenue and cost.

Selected work

Outcomes first. Then use them to inform the design.

Selected work from middle·dot engagements and in-house and agency leadership roles across banking, insurance, retail, media and enterprise tech.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise · via Quartz Media Network

Conversational AI that brought in better leads

Gated content was converting at 8% with 40% fake data. I bet that people would share real information in exchange for real value, and redesigned capture as a conversation: users explored 3–4 pieces of content before the bot asked for anything.

+30%qualified leads

−33%cost per lead

85%data quality, from 60%

Mobile phone screen showing the Hugo chatbot offering topics such as security and robotics.

AIG · Head of USER EXPERIENCE

Retirement and annuities platforms

As a player-coach leading a 15-person team, I redesigned a regulated annuities portal, launched a self-service pensions portal and led the award-winning redesign of a two-sided retirement platform — backed by an accessible pattern library.

+58% NPS · +17% QX score · −15% operating costs · clients brought into the design process

Nike Business Solutions · with R/GA

Self-service B2B commerce

A beta for small businesses and international retailers, with complex purchasing and fulfillment like size runs and split deliveries. Dual-track Agile and rapid prototyping sped up delivery.

$700M+ sales volume in beta · reviews 4 weeks faster through a new culture of trust

Charles Schwab · Independent consultant

A trust-sensitive platform migration

I facilitated rapid service design sessions on communication, onboarding and transition strategy for clients moving over from TD Ameritrade, and built virtual facilitation resources for remote teams.

Transition strategy for migrating clients · stronger remote collaboration

CODE AND THEORY · GROUP DIRECTOR OF USER EXPERIENCE

Scaling a UX practice

I grew the UX team from 5 to 23 people with career paths, capacity planning and shared processes, while leading B2B and consumer work for SiriusXM, Scholastic, WWE and Maybelline.

A team that grew from 5 to 23 · strongest retention in the org · 90% product-launch rate

Shutterstock · VP of User Experience

A photo editor built for busy small businesses

As VP of UX leading an 11-person team, I launched a zero-to-one in-browser editing tool to reduce churn, plus a mobile creator app in 18 languages and a design system spanning seven brands. Research with small businesses showed their people are multitasking and use the tool occasionally — so we skipped the heavy workflows built for design teams. It's the same insight I bring to every smaller company I work with.

Zero-to-one launch · 7 brands on one design system · research practices adopted across product and design

About

Hi, I'm Jody.

I've been an executive director at Wells Fargo, head of UX at AIG and VP of UX at Shutterstock. I've led teams of fifteen and been a team of one. I started middle·dot in 2017 to work with the companies I most enjoy: big enough to have real problems, small enough to move on the answers.

I studied at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and taught UX, research and visual artifacts at Pratt Institute.