Resume

Avery Katz

Product designer with 15 years of experience building intuitive, high-quality B2B and consumer experiences in fast-paced startup environments. Versatile, hands-on, and comfortable wearing many hats across the full product lifecycle, from early concept to shipped features and rapid iteration. Proven at working closely cross-functionally to move quickly using AI-driven design and development tools to make smart tradeoffs and deliver real customer value.

Work Experience

Punchcut

Senior Designer

2026 – Present

PG&E

Innovation incubation prototyper and researcher

2025 – 2026
  • Design, conduct, and analyze customer pain point, concept card, landing page, and prototyping interviews
  • Built customizable mobile prototypes of Smart Meter integration with a PG&E app in Figma Make and tested them with users using realistic energy and dollar amounts
  • Story-telling and sliding building for board demo and presentation

WeaveGrid

Senior UX Designer

2023 – 2025
  • UI/UX interaction, specifications, and visual assets for admin dashboard and end-user products
  • Migrated client marketing web pages to our main web application, reducing the sign up process by a click and increasing conversion by 11%, and making it customizable by the customer success team without needing engineering tickets.
  • Designed and mailed 5000 postcards with custom logos, colors, and QR codes with UTM to drivers at 15 different utilities. Tracked the effectiveness of physical mailers to be 8% conversion which was well above our goals for the initiative.
  • Created a standard packet of all marketing websites, user interface screens, emails, SMS, and FAQ to be distributed to clients and easily commented on without needing to download or create an account.
  • Visual design system for desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes based on Material Design and adhering to WCAG standards. Built responsive designs using Figma Sites and created design libraries in Figma for WeaveGrid branding and client co-branding.
  • User research study design and execution. A/B testing design and implementation with LaunchDarkly.
  • Video content creation, storyboarding, directing, and editing for use at the Dtech booth and investors.

Cisco Systems Inc

Senior Product Designer

2011 – 2023
  • Lead product designer for Cisco headsets, webcam, and conference room phones. Delivered primary device interaction, human factors design and research, packaging, help content, and integration with web, mobile, and embedded apps. 
  • Managed remote human factors user testing during the COVID-19 pandemic for headsets by creating a comprehensive research test plan that included recruiting internal users, conducting qualitative interviews, and collecting data with a limited number of prototypes during lockdown. Identified and corrected fatal design flaws in both products. Shipped 10+ headsets that sold over 1 million units in just 5.5 years.
  • Designed real-time video and call, voice, and multi-modal UX (TV, conference phone, laptop, and mobile phone) for Webex Share, conference phones, and desk video phones. 
  • Designed AI assistant behaviors and multichannel management for a push-to-talk device in the retail vertical. 
  • Researched and built low, medium, and high fidelity proof of concept prototypes (including hardware!) for an internal innovation team highlighting cutting edge technology. 100% of the projects eventually became productized by Cisco.

Skills

  • Product Design
  • UI/UX Design and Specs
  • UX Research & Testing
  • Design Systems
  • Human Factors
  • Data-Driven Design
  • Rapid Prototyping
  • Figma
  • AI: Figma Make, Vercel, Kiro, Claude Code
  • Adobe CC
  • Javascript/HTML/CSS

Education

University of California Berkeley

BA Cognitive Science (concentration in Computational Modeling) 2011

Awards and Patents

Red Dot Product Design Award – Cisco Headset 730 (March 2020); DX 70 (June 2015); DX 80 (July 2014)

Boomless Headset – U.S. Patent No. D920,955 (June 2021)

Cal Gymnastics – Team Captain, 2011 Pac-10 All-Academic Second Team, 2010 Second Team All-Pac-10 in the All-Around, NACGC Scholastic All-American, and honorable mention for Pac-10 All-Academic team, 2009 NCAA West Regionals Representative on Floor Exercise