I'm Caitlin Atteberry, a Product Lead passionate about cross-functional collaboration, exploring data, and humanizing software.
I currently work at K4Connect, a mission-driven company that aims to serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities. I am passionate about building empathy within product development teams and working cross-function in order to solve real user problems as an organization.
I fill my free time building bikes, deadlifting, and hiking with my dog, Oscar.
Empathizing with users through research (whether large initiatives, or a "just enough" approach):
I aim to demystify this stage by inviting product development team members to sit in and participate in the process.
Synthesizing the research conducted to identify the users' biggest problem areas:
I strive to publicize this information at Sprint Reviews or other formalized reviews to highlight the importance of user research as a necessary and expected step in the product development cycle.
Idea generation phase:
Depending on the complexity of the work, sometimes this means a large-scale Discovery workshop with Customer Experience and Engineering and sometimes this means a quick working session with a few fellow designers close to the problem.
Visualizing the ideas:
The fidelity of the prototype should match the research objectives, whether it be a simple tree map for validating information architecture, or a pixel-perfect mockups to understand if visual hierarchy and microinterations resonate with users.
Testing with users to turn your educated guess into a validated conclusion:
It's important to include product development team members to this stage to increase understanding of paint points and build empathy.