Karissa Seiersen — Year Review
From student to design lead, Karissa is a prime example of what it means to grow a little taller. In her year review, Karissa tells us about her experience with Little Taller — and wanting to be a farmer.
Little Taller: What is your title, and then what is it you do every day?
Karissa: I am a product designer, but I am transitioning into a design lead. Typically, I’m involved in sales activities and learning how to manage those activities. Then I do a lot of work with multiple products that we own, including Schola and Allbound. So a lot of time is spent by myself, working long hours on one specific product. But when I transition, my days will shift to include more collaboration with the design team and the sales team.
Little Taller: How do you explain your job to other people who don’t quite understand?
Karissa: Oh, gosh. I say I am a graphic designer that focuses on product design, and I describe a random scenario. So typically, my go-to is if you go into a restaurant and the host has an iPad. They’re most likely using a system for seating you, and I would be the one to have designed the app.
Little Taller: You recently passed your 1-year anniversary, what’s your biggest takeaway?
Karissa: This was my first job out of school. Honestly, besides working remotely and not having an office, it’s been more than I could have asked for. When I graduated, I wanted to work remotely, so I was able to travel and work. It’s been a learning curve, but I think the best part of it is adaptable and that I didn’t have to know everything right off the back. Your first job outside of college can be scary, but I came in knowing my bosses. They saw the potential in me and helped bring that out of me. It’s just been a comfortable environment to work in and has been awesome. I get to do it with people that I love and care about and who have seen me grow throughout this process, which has been cool.
Little Taller: Where did you go to college, and what did you study?
Karissa: I went to Grand Canyon University, and I studied Advertisement and Public Relations specifically but halfway through, I realized I loved web design. It was too late for me to switch my major, but I switched out some advertising classes for some web design classes. So my diploma is advertising, but I typically tell people I’m a web and graphic design major.
Little Taller: Can you talk about more like the learning curve from what you experience at school versus what you experience at work?
Karissa: School teaches you a very straightforward path of dealing with projects and what the ideal scenario would look like when you have a client relationship. So, for example, a client comes in with nothing, ground zero, you get to talk to them about their story, create their branding, build their website, go through the stages of wire framing and comping, and then produce the final product. But with Little Taller, almost every client that I’ve interacted with is someone that we meet in the middle. This usually means they have pieces from different parts, and they don’t know how to put them together. Or they have a website that someone else designed and maybe it didn’t go as planned. So you figure out a way to get them to where they wanted to be. It’s been a learning curve to navigate how to talk to clients and how to get to what they are looking for. So I think the problem solving that came with client relationships was a learning curve, but that’s what I learned to really enjoy.
Little Taller: How are you balancing remote working in your everyday life?
Karissa: Great question. Am I? I’m not sure. I think a lot of people have this fancy idea of what remote working looks like: you have all this free time, you get to work from home, and it’s comforting. But in reality, you never leave your home, so there’s no work and home separation. I don’t leave the office when I’m done with work, and I have to force myself to take breaks. I could stop working at five and pick up my computer at seven and be like, “well, I’ll just do a couple more hours.” So I have to be strict with my time.
Little Taller: What are your favorite type of projects or designs to work on?
Karissa: We do a lot of on-boarding sections for products, so like step-by-step instructions of walking the user through a specific task. I always think that’s fun because the general concept is pretty much the same across the board like you start with the main screen of getting information and introducing them to the task, then you make each step, and then a final results page. The fun part is playing with the brand you’re working with and making that fit for them.
Little Taller: Do you work on any design projects on the side?
Karissa: Right now, my roommates and I are trying to start a blog called the “Aurora Wave.” It’s like a Seattle based music blog — I don’t know if we’re going insane from quarantine, and we’re trying to find weird outlets to do, but we’ve been working through the logo. So I try to do that on the weekend, and that’s fun because it’s pretty collaborative with them, and they have a lot of good insight for not knowing anything about design.
Little Taller: What is it you like most about working with Little Taller?
Karissa: The people probably. I definitely would not be able to do this job if I wasn’t as close as I am to the people that work here. Outside of work, Alex is my best friend, so getting to talk to her every day makes my life way more enjoyable. I also enjoy working for startups because it’s usually fast-paced, and it’s a fun challenge to work with passionate people who have dreams, but they don’t know how to accomplish it, or they don’t have the means to.
Little Taller: So looking to the future, what are you looking forward to in the next year?
Karissa: I think just growing my skill set and getting better at being in a more of a manager/leadership role. It’s something that I didn’t want early on, mainly because I didn’t think I could do it. So I’m excited to see how that grows and flourishes, especially with design and working closely with Kendra and Katelyn.
Little Taller: So, what are some things that ensure you can do your job effectively?
Karissa: Coffee and communicating with everyone — always. Sometimes I don’t talk to anyone all day, and it makes projects move slow, or sometimes you do the wrong thing without knowing it. So coffee, communicating, and lots of sleep. I feel like we all use our brain so much all day, and if I don’t get a good night’s sleep, I have no idea what I’m doing next day.
Little Taller: How did you get connected to Kyle or Murphy? How did that turn into a position with Little Taller?
Karissa: Kyle and Murphy were both my professors. I ended up TA-ing for Kyle my senior year, but I had Murphy for most of my classes. As I was graduating, I knew they had started Little Taller, and I would tell Murphy repeatedly that if they had any jobs, I would do it — not really caring what they were. Eventually, the time came around, and the stars aligned — Murphy pulled me aside, and I didn’t even hear what the job was or if I was getting paid or anything, but I said I would take it. I knew it would be dumb to pass up an opportunity to do any work, so I just jumped on it, and I’ve been here ever since.
Little Taller: Now that you’re with Little Taller, what are some responsibilities that you enjoy the most, and what do you enjoy the least?
Karissa: I love owning or running a product. Typically once the first stage of product design is complete, I’m pretty much directly in contact with that client from then on out. I think just the responsibility of owning a project is really fun. This kind of contradicts what I just said, but client calls can be intimidating. I don’t hate them, I’ve gotten better at them, but if there’s a lot of calls in one day, I definitely get nervous. But then I get through it, and I’m like, “OK, it was fine.”
Little Taller: Looking at this past year, what accomplishments are you most proud of?
Karissa: I would say the beginning of this year, which feels like two years ago now, we closed a project for Dashboard, and that was the biggest project I had had thus far. It was an inventory tracker for restaurants and bars, and I was freaking nervous because it was a huge project. I hadn’t done anything that big, and it honestly went super well. The other would be working super closely with Allbound because that’s new, and I get to work closely with their product designer and learn the ins and outs of their product.
Little Taller: So how do you make a point to continue learning while being in this position?
Karissa: I don’t. That’s something I could do better with, like just taking time out of my weekend or day to read up on new design trends. Actually, there’s a podcast I love called Design Matters. I try to listen to that a lot but not as much as I should.
Little Taller: How do you think you would be able to learn in your new position with becoming a design lead?
Karissa: I’m excited about that because I feel like it gives me a space to have the freedom to learn more and bring that in. Since I will be mentoring people and leading people, I want to incorporate design activities with our design team. So like assigning weekly readings or having people find designs that they love and then sharing. I also thought about bringing in design sprints. So you take a week and come up with an idea, and by Friday, you have like a mockup or a prototype. I have a lot of ideas of things I want to do. I’m not sure how to implement them or balance them with client and professional development work.
Little Taller: Yeah, I think those are some cool ideas. It helps keep ideas fresh and make sure that your brain is still working smoothly.
Karissa: Yeah, and it’s fun because it’s hard that we’re all remote, so we don’t get to see each other every day and pinball ideas off each other.
Little Taller: What is one professional skill you are currently looking to develop?
Karissa: Stronger communication skills, I would say. It has more to do with keeping everyone connected more so than communicating on projects. Like I want to be better at messaging people things like “Hey, how’s your day? How are you doing?” It doesn’t have to be about something specific, but just making that time to talk to everyone and keeping people connected.
Little Taller: So this one has nothing to do with a Little Taller, but if you can be an expert at anything, what would that be?
Karissa: I have lots of things because I have a lot of random passions. I would love to be a history professor at a nice college. Or agriculture, I wanted to leave Little Taller a while ago and be a farmer. I was like set in stone on doing it and just like learning how to grow crops and go to farmer’s markets to sell stuff and then start a business from there. So if I weren’t working with Little Taller, I would for sure be a farmer. Maybe a drummer, I don’t know, I have so many passions.
