Hello Highspot,
I wanted to dedicate a space on my portfolio site to provide examples on how the Guiding Principles at your company have come into play during my professional career. I hope by telling your team how I embody your guiding principles, I will showcase myself as a great candidate for the position of Product Designer.
ALL IN
One of the hardest and most worth-while achievements I have under my belt is graduating with my bachelor of arts degree in visual communications from Seattle Pacific University. This achievement required me to be "all in" with passion, dedication, mental fortitude, and finances. Though the path to achievement was not an easy one, I would say it was definitely worth the investment.
Now that I am several years removed from graduating, I continue to see how the support and accountability from my peers and professors pushed me to be the best that I possibly could. Because I had a positive experience with my peers and superiors at university, I aim to bring that demeanor into the workplace. The goal is for a workplace to be an environment of growth and opportunity that leads to success and the best work possible as a team.
INVENT THE FUTURE
As a dedicated designer, I am constantly browsing through articles and websites that creatives are utilizing so I can keep up with the cutting edge trends of design. This really pushes me to always be thinking 2 steps ahead and to lean into market needs.
In a company setting, I am pushing myself to challenge the status quo through communicating feature requests for my company's product to the appropriate teams. These feature requests help push our app product to be the best client tool that it can be.
Recently Launched Feature Requests:
• Dark Mode Support
• App Analytics Improvements
• Bookmark Content Capability
DETAILS MATTER
One of the primary client bases we serve at Pushpay is for catholic customers across the United States. Our catholic customers have shown resistance towards embracing technology and often have felt overwhelmed with their options when it comes to a mobile app. I recently worked on a project that helped simplify their options for the mobile app by creating an A/B experience for their app design.
Projects & Experience:
• App Discovery Deck (made in Adobe XD)
Although our team had a generic discovery deck in place for our customers prior to this project, taking the extra time to pay attention to this customer type and their needs led to an iteration that minimized frustration and helped streamline our catholic customers towards embracing our app product.
EARN THE NEXT CHALLENGE
At Pushpay, delivering stellar work consistently in my role led to a promotion opportunity that I was able to be hired for. This promotion has allowed me to work with Enterprise size customers which means bigger and more important challenges in my role as an app production and design specialist.
Our enterprise team has had the privilege to work with Hillsong USA, MOSAIC, and the Father's House; all some of the largest and most well-known church organizations in the United States.
MOST RESPECTFUL INTERACTION
Respecting people is something that was ingrained in me at a young age and I strive to exemplify this principle in both my professional and personal life. I have a firm belief that all people have high value and even if you do not share the same viewpoints as them, each person is able to bring something vital to conversations and projects if you make space for them to have a seat at the table.
I actively work on learning how to not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, citizenship, color, ethnicity, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or invisible disability status, political affiliation, veteran status, race, religion, or sexual orientation of any human.
COLLABORATE ACROSS BOUNDARIES
Whenever there is an opportunity to improve internal processes or optimize on our existing product, I am grateful I have been able to bring up the suggestion or request to the appropriate person in my organization.
Collaborative Conversations I've Had:
• Development and feature requests with Product.
• Escalation of bugs and optimal functionality with Engineering.
• Discussed gaps in culture and key motivators with Department Lead.
Being able to have collaborative opportunities that will ultimately benefit customers and their experience with the product and company are experiences I look forward to. When we win as a company, our clients also win.
OPEN AND REAL
One way this plays out in my current role is through the app design team's critique sessions that happen every 2 weeks. In this space we are dedicated to give and receive feedback on individual app designs to make sure they align with our key design principles: Empathy, Functional, Useful, Beautiful & Accessible. The goal is to empower collaboration, increase accuracy in designs and build team confidence.
Created in Miro:
This space allows our team to support each other through accountability to ensure we are delivering our best.
LEARN IT ALL, NOT KNOW IT ALL
I consider myself a lifelong learner and a quick study. As a lifelong learner, I am always seeking out new opportunities to be a subject matter expert in my field through reading materials and online tutorials. I am known to be a quick study and have been able to complete the training process quicker than expected at several companies, which adds speed to value in my employment.
I am also someone who proactively will seek out answers with the resources I am given. In my current role, that looks like consulting Slack, Confluence, and Help Centers for the products. This shows that I am a self-motivated problem solver who is able to lean in and discover answers on my own.
INVEST WISELY
In a fast-paced technology company, there's a common understanding that time is money. In 2020, my company made a decision to move off of a legacy platform hosted on an external provider site to one created and developed by our in-house engineers and product teams. This would result in being able to allocate the funds directed to the external provider back into our own company.
There were about 3,000 legacy customers that needed to be transitioned over to the new CMS and the apps team was tasked with that transition. When we first approached the project, each transition would have taken anywhere from 4-8 hours per app. I proposed that our team create a template that could be easily applied to each customer instance which resulted in app transitions now taking 30 minutes to 2 hours instead.
My initiative and insight to this issue saved our company an estimated 10,000 invested work hours for this transition project which was crucial in being able to cancel our subscriptions and contracts with the external provider that much sooner.
MAKE IT HAPPEN
I was able to move a mountain through a business case proposal for a team space called Culture of Design. Culture of Design is a biweekly team meeting that I pioneered to help boost team knowledge, camaraderie, and subject knowledge expertise.
Examples of Meeting Content:
• Design Best Practices
• Design Challenges
• App Design of the Month
• Team Building Activities
When I have passion and am driven towards achieving something, I work very hard to attain the objective or goal in mind.
ENJOY THE RIDE
When you celebrate the successes of those around you, you can create a culture where people feel valued and seen for their hard work. One way this plays out at Pushpay is through the Above & Beyond award. Every month the previous winner of this award will select a new recipient who has truly gone Above & Beyond their role to see the success of our customers and our business.
I received the Above & Beyond award in December of 2021. I am always diligent to put my best foot forward and to delight my customers by helping them attain their goals. My award presenter Matt called out an example where I worked extra hours to ensure I was able to wow a customer on their app design in a constrained turnaround delivery time. This was just one example of where I had been willing to go Above & Beyond for our customers and I pride myself on working hard to achieve goals and results.
Thank you Highspot for allowing me to share how your guiding principles have been intertwined in my career journey.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this page is privileged and only for the information of the intended recipient and may not be used, published or redistributed without the prior written consent of Katie Baumheckel.