I’m a senior product designer from Canada. Where in Canada? Well, I was born and raised in Calgary, I went to university in Vancouver, and right now I call Toronto home. I have lived all over, including in Canmore and Jasper. So if you’ve got a trip to the Rockies planned, yes I do want to give you all the recs.
When I decided to move from theatre and film to technology, I thought I was going to be a developer. But the admissions rep at Bitmaker (now General Assembly) spoke to me for about 5 minutes before telling me that my aptitude was perfect for product design.
He was totally right.
Working as a product designer is the best career (for me) because there is always a new challenge; a new problem space to dive into. I love unpacking a problem with my cross functional partners to uncover the problem under the problem. I am always careful to solve for that rather than the symptom.
If I had to define where my specialty lies, it’s there in the problem space. I love defining a problem and collaborating on potential solutions. It’s my bread and butter.
You’ll find me in a circus studio where I practice aerial silks and lyra. Or in a pottery studio - I have a love hate relationship with the pottery wheel. Or on the couch, reading whatever book I can’t put down.
Have you ever contributed to a design system?
Yes! During my time a Q4 the company went through a complete rebrand. Part of this process included a complete overhall of the design system. The entire design team collaborated on a new design direction, and we all contributed to the rebuild of the new design system.
During my time at Nulogy, I wrote a content guide to help unify our voice and tone and the ways in which we wrote micro copy.
What are some examples of how you have contributed to the operations of a design team?
I ran workshops at Nulogy and at Q4 with the entire design team to establish new design principles. The intention was to have the full team contribute so that the principles would be a representation of the team and their values.
At Q4, I also revamped our retrospective ritual after hearing feedback from the team that they felt like they were unable to make an impact to help solve the problems they were feeling. After this change our action items went from a 15% completion rate to 80%.
Do you have experience mentoring designers?
I had the privilege to work as the design lead on the Customer Relationship Management project at Q4. In that time, I oversaw the work of an intermediate designer who was contributing to the project. We did design reviews, and I sought out opportunities for her to work on skills that she wanted to develop.
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