Open to senior / lead product design roles

Product designer for complex systems where trust, scale, and AI intersect.

15+ years designing enterprise platforms and human-AI systems that make complex work feel clearer, more useful, and easier to scale.

15+years enterprise UX
Human-AItrust-critical systems
Scale2M+ monthly users
Michael Hawkins
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

The arc

I started in creative direction - building design teams and shipping consumer educational software - before moving into enterprise product design. I then spent 13+ years at a global enterprise assessments company, designing the systems people depend on when the stakes are real: remote proctoring used for 21M+ annual exams, identity verification, biometric admissions, and AI-assisted review operations.

Why human-AI work

The most interesting design problems I've worked on share a shape: a capable model, a consequential decision, and a human who has to own the outcome. My job has been making that relationship honest - translating model probability into evidence people can evaluate, designing for the AI's known failure modes, and keeping judgment where it belongs.

How I work

Evidence first: I start with the hardest constraints - compliance, AI uncertainty, auditability, offline behavior - and design so people can navigate them. I align product, engineering, and operations around what will actually ship, and I build systems rather than screens, from design standards spanning 50+ applications to workflows serving 2M+ monthly users.

Where I create the most leverage.

Human-AI Interaction

AI-assisted workflows, explainability, computer vision UX, biometric interfaces, and human-in-the-loop systems.

Enterprise Architecture

Multi-tenant SaaS, operational tooling, design systems across 50+ applications, and product ecosystems.

Rapid Prototyping

Figma, coded prototypes, design sprints, and storytelling that reduce ambiguity and move teams toward buildable decisions.

Trust-Critical UX

Compliance, auditability, identity verification, offline states, accessibility, and high-stakes user flows.

What colleagues say.

He's exceptional at turning messy constraints into intuitive flows, aligning stakeholders quickly, and delivering high-quality iterations at speed.

Greg Anderson · Senior Product Manager

He consistently brought clarity to ambiguity and helped align cross-functional teams around thoughtful, practical design decisions.

Mani Anna · Product Architect

He knows how to make designs that are clean, functional, and straightforward to implement and develop.

Eric Boothe · Senior Software Developer

He has a rare talent for articulating the 'why' behind every interaction, ensuring the final implementation matches the original vision perfectly.

Michele Huspek · Senior Business Systems Analyst
Have a complex product problem?

Get In Touch

mike@mhportfolio.com