Hi, I'm Kathryn!
I'm the Director of User Experience at Apptronik, building the user experience and human-robot interaction practice for humanoid robots in Austin, TX. Before that, I was Creative Director at argodesign working with Magic Leap, Salesforce, Northwestern Mutual, and United Rentals on everything from spatial computing interaction models to enterprise digital transformation.
I'm the author of Prototyping for Designers (O'Reilly, published as Kathryn McElroy), and I've spoken at SXSW, O'Reilly Design Conference, UXLx, and Austin Design Week. I teach Storytelling in Design at UT Austin.
What I'm Exploring
I'm neck-deep in testing the best ways for robots to communicate and collaborate with humans which means I have daily, fascinating conversations about the level of personification and personalization that show up in our robotic counterparts. I'm building out UX processes and evaluative criteria that help my team and engineering teams understand what a good Human Robot Experience looks and feels like.
I've also been thinking about how best to work with AI, and how my approach looks more like creative direction than prompt engineering. I've been writing about my process to set intent up front, calibrate as it works, and notice when something's drifted before it becomes a real problem, giving high-quality feedback before it's too late. That's meant testing the method on harder problems, like prototyping agentic frameworks for human-robot interaction and giving AI more durable context to work from.
Outside of work, I have an art practice and host a monthly art night to bring people together and make things by hand. More on the About page, and on Instagram at @kathrynmakes.