Catt Small works at SoundCloud’s New York office as a Product Designer with the Monetization team. She works hard designing new features for SoundCloud, while keeping users happy, informed, and empowered. To make this happen, Catt spends a lot of time researching, sketching, diagramming, mocking-up designs, and prototyping.
We’re stoked to have Catt Small as part of the Web Unleashed 2015 speaker line-up, so we caught up with her to find out a bit more about her, what she does, and why you should hear her speak this fall in Toronto.
What’s the best part of your day job?
I'm designing things that reach millions of people. Whether it's a completely new feature or a redesign of a pre-existing interface, knowing that my work affects people in a positive way is quite a powerful feeling. Sometimes the scale of my work can feel overwhelming, but I really enjoy it.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on?
I can't reveal too much about upcoming projects at SoundCloud, but a past contribution I am proud of is help with the navigation redesign for our external sites. I helped start the conversation and did a lot of prototyping after noticing inconsistencies in our sites’ navigation bars. The redesign will take time to implement on older sites, but all new sites have the same consistent navigation.
Additionally, I make games in my spare time. I'm currently finishing up SweetXheart, a game about appearances, microaggressions, and the tech industry. I’m creating the art, designing, and coding the game. A talented friend of mine, Arielle Martinez, is helping me with the music. I’m always looking for feedback, so people who want to playtest should get in touch! I want to release the game by the end of the year.
What’s the best career advice you were ever given?
Ask for help. If you don’t, others will and you’ll get left behind. Revealing your vulnerabilities seems counterintuitive and is quite scary, but you learn faster and achieve more when you collaborate.
Why should people come to your session at Web Unleashed?
Game development is a great way to flex user experience and programming muscles. As a UX designer, my job centers around communication and how people interact with interfaces. Game design involves a lot of the same skills. In terms of programming, games require a different kind of logic and system design from web development. I’ve been web programming using JavaScript for over 7 years, but only began to understand certain concepts once I had to make a game with dialogue and multiple endings. I want to share advice and help others get started so that we can all improve at what we do best!
If you could have super human powers, what would they be?
Teleportation, replication, and the ability to sleep on command. These would make everything in my life much easier. I’d likely be the worst superhero ever (next to Aquaman), but I’d be happy!
