Hello. I’m Katie…
an American made design leader living in sun-drenched Sydney with over 15 years of experience working as a Product Designer and Manager, from startups through to enterprise-level companies.
As a little girl, I didn’t dream about creating financial software but surprisingly it’s interesting discovering new innovative ways to create instinctive, automated experiences, the end result saving thousands of hours for users. I like to keep my hands dirty, knowing how to use the tools and learning new research methods. That said, these days I spend more time creating high performing teams and a unified product vision. My leadership experience has taught me that innovation must be a collaboration that merges the intersections of user needs, business goals and technical feasibility to allow teams to create practical solutions.
I love building teams that hum…
For the last ten years I’ve been building DATA DRIVEN design teams who are aligned around the same goal. Creating a culture of trust that challenges as well as celebrates differences. An essential skill I’ve developed within my teams is the ability to influence. Designers must be storytellers, who can find different ways to articulate their research and how that translates into the design. At MYOB, I’ve helped grow our team from 5 to over 50 Designers, personally managing up to 10 people; including researchers, cross functional designers and visual designers.
As well as developing designers, I love diving into the day to day problems of getting teams to work more efficiently. Often that means evaluating the design delivery process and pain points in how different roles collaborate. I’ve had extensive experience improving consistency by implementing and building a system that is used by 50+ designers across two countries. This was not a comfortable journey, with a lot of design debt due to legacy challenges.
What I geek out on is…
Putting metrics around how design experiences are measured. In my most recent role, I’ve helped shape and implement the rollout of our Experience Level Objective (XLOs), which has become the baseline of how we gauge if workflows are score enough to launch as a beta or general release. The XLOs are based around the principle of consistency, efficiency, flexibility, helpfulness and being finely crafted, as well as a customer satisfaction score. This baseline sets a standard for how an experience is launched as a Beta or General release, as well as the continual improvement over time. I also want to learn more about gaining design insights from Telemetry. I know a little about Tableau and Sequel quarries, but I still have lots to learn.
When I’m not problem solving at work…
I’m problem solving at home, casing two kids and finding creative ways to extinguish the big emotions of a 3 year old. I love travelling and learning about new cultures. We are those crazy people who take our young kids on long-haul overseas trips. Last year we were lucky enough to go snowboarding in Aspen! I enjoy being active, whether it be a HIIT class or a beautiful coastal walk along the Eastern Suburbs Beaches.
