XYO Insider: Meet Paola Batiz, Our Resident Design Wizard!

Have you ever met a person who was so artistically talented in so many ways, that there’s no doubt in your mind that they could basically pick any art or even art-adjacent profession, and instantly be a master at whatever they chose?

This is Paola Batiz, affectionately known at XYO as “Pao”.

If she wasn’t already our Head of Design, I’m 100% certain she’d be an award-winning photographer, a lauded painter, or an insanely in-demand web designer.

On my very first day at XYO, when I asked about our design resources, I was told we had a designer who handled all the company artwork, from our website to well beyond.

She had only been at XYO a few months, but she was already legendary. “Amazing”, I believe, was the word used.

But a few days after I started, I finally understood something more about Pao. She was more than an artist, she was a wizard.

With design, people often have no idea what they want. But they know what they don’t want.

Pao could take minimal amount of information — even a sentence fragment of an idea — and based on that scant amount of intel, whip up something clean, stunning, and well-beyond what the person ever could have dreamed of.

This is a video of Pao, talking about design, life at XYO, and how she became our go-to person for everything from graphics to the user experience in our apps to the grand signage you’ll see at Spatial, our first annual conference.

She’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met, and a key member of the XYO team!