KATE MILLS

Product strategy & design

👋🏼 Howdy. Thanks for stopping by.

I'm a Senior Product Lead at Design Like You Mean It, where I wear both product and design hats.
Mainly, I focus on product discovery, strategy, and helping clients get super user-curious.

Previously at CVS/Aetna and SonderMind

My personal product principles

🍇
Nothing in isolation

The system works best if all the parts work together and contribute to the whole. Seek to understand how each part affects each other to build usable and scalable solutions.

🤝
Bring 'em along

Stakeholders, teammates, users–you gotta bring 'em along with you. Communicate early and often. Move forward together with shared understanding. This builds inclusivity into your solution, will instill trust, and increase your efficiency.

🔕
Keep it simple, sis.

The simplest solution to the problem is usually the best one. Our world is already complex enough, so lean into predictability and clarity and away from bells and whistles that just exist to make noise.

🙅🏻‍♀️
You are not your user. (!!!)

Your users are not a monolith. Your own thoughts and feelings (or those of your opinionated neighbor, best friend, etc.) are just one data point in the sea of your diverse target audience. Your incorrect assumptions can tank your solution.

More about me

I've been designing for humans in one way or another for most of my adult life.

After cutting my teeth in education, curriculum design, and training, I followed my heart into product design almost a decade ago.

I have seven years of experience working in the healthcare space, including from the insurance, patient, and provider sides of the system. I learned the art of translation from being a teacher, and it's something I've honed in product: processing complex information into something that people just get, whether that's users or internal partners. I also find my yeehaw mentoring junior designers on the ins and outs of strategy, stakeholder management, design process, and confidently owning a project.

Wanna work together?

Drop me a line below or via electronic mail.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.