I’m Kate.
I’m a designer and sketcher, living in the Bay Area. I think, write and speak about UX, product metrics, learning environments, visual thinking, and entrepreneurship.
I consult for companies and teach interaction design at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. And I co-host the NSFW podcast What is Wrong with UX with the hilariously brilliant Laura Klein.
I’ve gotten to do a lot of fun things…
- I co-founded the UX Track at Tradecraft, an intense 12-week immersive learning program that preps smart people to succeed in traction roles at high-growth startups, where I designed UX curriculum and got to work with many crazy-awesome people.
- I Co-Founded Luxr, a product company that helped entrepreneurs make things that people want, need and love to buy.
- Prior to Luxr, I was a Sr. Practitioner and consulting lead at Adaptive Path, where I got to work with amazing clients and colleagues in the world of product design and user experience.
I have a checkered past, but the common thread that knots it all together is design, the Internet, art, making stuff and technology. A few places I’ve spent time: The Crucible, Epicentric, Burning Man, Alumnae Resources and Wellesley College.
I believe that every problem can be made clearer by communicating in pictures, that sharpie pens smell like ideas, and that any group of collaborative and optimistic people have the power to change the world. So long as they have a pack of stickynotes.
Why is this blog called intelleto?
I got the concept when I read Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, by Stephen Nachmanovitch. Intelleto is the process of seeing something inherent in a material and bringing it alive. Michelangelo claimed he was guided by this faculty, which is intelligence, not of the merely rational kind, but visionary intelligence, a deep seeing of the underlying pattern beneath appearances. That’s a phrase paraphrased from the book. It’s a good book. You should read it.
