🐱 Catt Small 👩🏾‍💻

Teaches the Staff Designer course to cohorts of 30–50 individuals once per quarter.

Drives strategic initiatives that create cohesion across Dropbox's portfolio of products. Facilitates conversations with product and design leadership that result in cross-organizational alignment. Leads the design of experiences that elevate how millions of customers use Dropbox products through hands-on work and collaboration with numerous cross-functional teams. Directs and mentors individual designers to improve their craft outcomes while supporting their professional development.

Co-creates the vision and strategy for an annual event that highlights game creators of color through a virtual conference and gaming expo. Hires and directs contractors for various initiatives. Leads the 4-person Communications committee that connects members of our 15K+ person online audience across social media, email, and traditional news sites with learning and funding opportunities. Proposes and implements changes to internal policies that create alignment and accountability. Identifies areas of operational and budgetary inefficiency; proposes and implements solutions that reduce efforts spent on information management.

Drove the strategy for an annual game development event with 15k+ social media community (grown from 0) and $500k+ budget. Directed design of the website and social media presence in collaboration with various committee members. Hired, managed, and grew the talent of 10+ contractors across design, motion graphics, and communications. Curated talks, games, and the event schedule. Led the transition from five years of hybrid events to a fully virtual event due to COVID. Built a culture of transparency, respect, and accountability.

Provides product design direction and advice to founders of a revenue-positive startup with the goal of helping them scale and reach their next stage of growth. Created a custom design system for the product and implemented the company's rebrand within the system.

Provided product design direction and advice to founders of a revenue-positive startup with the goal of helping them scale and reach their next stage of growth. Drove the design of several key user flows to aid the company in productizing previously manual workflows.

Facilitated the creation of vision, culture, and rituals for the 5-person Product Design team. Created and documented workflows and methodologies that helped designers do their best work, efficiently. Planned project staffing and timelines in collaboration with studio partners, Design Operations, Brand Design Director, and Head of Design. Co-created cross-organizational processes that clarified expectations, roles, and responsibilities of employees at all levels. Coached reports to reach ideal outcomes through collaborative ideation and curiosity-driven design feedback rooted in strategic objectives. Assigned a report to a stretch project that resulted in a promotion. Interviewed and hired senior design talent. Contributed to potential growth of the company through regular business development, driving connections with startups creating the future of remote work.

Led product design for the ideation through launch of Asana's new goal management product. Led the creation of a 2–3 year product vision for integrated goal management in Asana. Led the design of continuous improvements to Goals in Asana through direct impact and collaboration with a variety of other designers across several teams. Collaborated with teams across Asana to create experiences that promote clarity for organizations using goal management. Facilitated workshops that help teams within Asana create a shared design language; align on customer problems; and generate ideas for innovative, impactful solutions. Co-created and conducted research plans with UXR and PM to understand our customers and validate the viability of concepts, the usability of solutions, and the behavioral impact of intended workflow improvements. Mentored and supported junior and senior Product Designers to accelerate their growth while ensuring their designs meet customer experience standards. Contributed a design perspective to roadmapping and staffing conversations, enabling Product to prioritize work and ensure teams are set up for success. Collaborated with Design Operations and Design Management to identify and implement process improvements that increase design efficiency. Represented Asana at conferences and on podcasts. Contributed to the improvement of design operations at Asana by providing input on competency matrices, Figma processes, and internal programs to accelerate design learning.

Facilitated the creation of a customer service performance dashboard that enables Etsy's 2 million sellers to better understand and abide by company policies. Designed improvements to internal Trust & Safety tools that will save agents up to 100 clicks per task. Organized discovery and design workshops in order to empower the Trust & Safety product team with knowledge of the issues Etsy's customer service agents face. Created seller personas for Etsy's Trust & Safety personas, therefore contributing to product strategy needs. Mentored designers and participated in hiring and recruiting initiatives. Contributed design guidelines to Etsy's design system.

Collaborated across teams to design, build, and launch cross-platform tools such as sales and coupons. Designed and released two new iterations of seller stats that helped 2 million Etsy sellers take growth actions with data and insights from Etsy; 670K sellers use the product each month. Created design vision and product strategy by leading product conversations, facilitating design exercises, and producing useful design artifacts. Led the creation of seller personas, which were based on over 20 research participants with Etsy shops and have since been used to generate over 40k new users of seller marketing tools, leading to an increase in revenue. Contributed new components and design guidelines to Etsy's design system. I also co-led two employee resource groups at Etsy, including one year managing communications for their largest ERG for marginalized genderfolk called MAGIC (100+ members).

Designed seller-focused product and marketing user experiences for Etsy's payments platform, including the launch of Etsy Payments, a new product that earned the company millions of additional dollars in revenue. Led the initiative to create usage guidelines for Etsy’s seller design system.

Designed and prototyped user experiences for Android, iOS, and the web. Contributed to design vision and product strategy for monetization and connected devices. Collaborated with several teams to launch cross-platform monetization features and products. This was also my first time hiring, managing, and mentoring two design interns who then became full-time employees.

Designed the Android and web purchase experience for a new subscription service. Headed the design of horizontal and vertical video ad products on mobile. Led the design of a highly-requested promotional tool for creators. Additional contributions included dedigning the receiver design for the company’s Google Cast integration, catalyzing the generation of personas that provided design direction for the company, and co-founding the company's employee resource group for Black people.

Attended graduate school while working full-time. Learned to edit videos, generate human narratives, and create interactive installations.

Learned what it takes to be a designer ✨

Learned how to create all kinds of art 🎨