Catt Small is a 22-year-old user experience designer and game developer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She started coding websites and games at the age of ten, her initial inspiration for what she does today. I chose to write about her because she is a young designer and loves games just like I do. In this article, I’m going to go over her internships, events, and job experiences. She made so many contributions thus far at such a young age, she has inspired me in many ways.
In 2000, she furthered her coding skills by making KiSS, a Japanese dree-up doll game. She spent many hours drawing the game and then coded it into Dreamweaver to host it. In 2005 she got her first part-time job at 3iYing as a designer. 3iYing is an all-girl marketing firm. She helped redesign campaigns, graphics, prints, and stickers, and wrote business articles. Between 2008 and 2009, she interned at a few companies while still pursuing a bachelor’s degree as a graphic designer at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She interned at NYC HRA, D’art Inc., and Alexander Interactive. At NYC HRA, she got the opportunity to program and design their website for training purposes. Similarly, at D’art Inc., she programmed and designed websites for companies around the world. At Alexander Interactive, she did design research. Around 2010, she spent the last couple of years as an undergraduate working at Nasdaq, a financial services company. She worked in the events department, programming and designing the website. A year after graduating, she went back to working for them in 2012 where she focused on product design. She worked on projects for GlobeNewswire and Nasdaq Workspace that focus on public relations and law.
Apart from making games, she also writes and speaks publicly for publications such as Modern View Culture, Kotaku, and her own blog at https://cattsmall.com/blog/. She is passionate about diversity in technology, specifically video games. In 2012, she organized classes, events, and workshops at Tech Under Thirty, an event holder for people in the design and tech industry under 30 years of age. In 2013, she and two other friends decided to found a game development studio called Brooklyn Gamery. They made games for several mobile and computer operating systems. In 2014, she started working for Soundcloud and focused on monetization as a product designer. Her outstanding performance led to a promotion in 2016, where she helped grow the design team, managed interns, and improved the payment experience for Soundcloud Go.
In 2015, she hosted a TEDxFoggyBottom talk where she talks about wanting to change the face of game development. She notices issues such as sexism, racism, and demeaning tropes. In her further research, she also talks about the gender imbalance in the game industry. Over the years, there has been a decreasing number of women and an increasing number of men in game development. Some women who have spoken about this issue have become victims of harassment and threats. Instead of waiting for change, she and her team wanted to help women and other marginalized groups make their own games. This is when the Code Liberation Foundation came into existence, founded by Phoenix Perry.
In 2016, she started working for Etsy, a Brooklyn-based marketplace. She worked with the Payments and Checkout teams to launch Etsy Payments, a brand new way to pay and be paid on the platform. As part of the Seller Ads and Insights team, she designed tools that helped sellers reach new buyers and gain insight into their shops. She also helped the Trust & Safety team to monitor the quality of the experiences that sellers provide to buyers.
Today she works for Asana, a web and mobile platform that helps users manage, organize, and track their work. For the first six months, she devoted herself to leading the product design process of a new goal management product, from ideation to launch. From high-level visions to execution, she oversaw Asana’s Goals strategy. Since July 2020, they have shipped a number of continuous improvements, and she’s thrilled to be delivering value to their customers for years to come.
Such as myself, Catt is devoted to helping improve the lives of people through design. She creates empathy with others through personal projects, human experience, interpersonal relationships, self-expression, gender, and race. She has spoken at events all across the world such as AIGA Design Conference, Beyond Tellerrand in Germany, UX Week, Microsoft’s Codess Seattle, Google’s WomenTechmakers NYC, and TEDxFoggyBottom. She has also spoken at schools such as Yale and Colombia University.
Bibliography:
Small, Catt. “About Catt Small.” Catt Small, 13 Jan. 2013, cattsmall.com/about/. Accessed 3 May 2022.
Women Talk Design. “Catt Small.” Women Talk Design, 13 May 2020, womentalkdesign.com/speakers/catt-small/. Accessed 3 May 2022.
TEDxTalks. Changing the Face of Game Development | Catt Small | TEDxFoggyBottom. 5 May 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHIHrM8TF4&ab_channel=TEDxTalks. Accessed 3 May 2022.
