In our Meet the Team series, we highlight our Anthro-Tech teammates! Learn more about our user-experience designers, researchers, content strategists, and leadership team as we explore their career journey, favorite projects, and how they joined Anthro-Tech.

This month, we are sitting down with Camy Naasz, our Senior Human-Centered Design (HCD) Consultant!

Tell us about your background and what led you to work at Anthro-Tech

I received a M.S. degree from Virginia Tech in business information technology in 2001 and spent some time working in positions related to actuary and business development and with some amount of programming involved. A few years later, I started working for the State of Washington in a position where I saw first-hand the challenges businesses faced while working in and with the state and saw opportunities for process improvements. One day in 2008, I was invited to represent minority and women-owned businesses in efforts by the State to make it easier to do business in Washington, and User-Centered Design (UCD) found me.

Soon after, I was blessed to join a team of State website designers and developers with mentorship from Anthro-Tech’s founder and CEO, Suzanne Boyd, who helped me learn my new craft and grow the State’s enterprise user-centered design service. In 2011, I was doubly blessed to join the Anthro-Tech team and expand my consulting reach to additional types of clients and products, as well as expanding my pool of mentors to include the experts on the Anthro-Tech team.

What does a workday in the life of Camy look like?

Every day is different. I am always a part of multiple projects at once, designing entirely different experiences in collaboration with client teams of varying levels of User-Centered Design maturity. I start my days with some serious calendaring time to make sure I can fit it all in.

On a given day, I could go from helping leaders define next steps to improve their customer experience strategy and practices to brainstorming new user flows and interactions with information architects and designers. I’m usually giving presentations, planning, or analyzing user research, leading team meetings, coaching and mentoring team members, taking training to learn new skills, and hopefully taking advantage of those moments throughout the day to spend time with people and build relationships.

I’m a big believer that “multi-tasking is for suckers.” I try not to be a sucker and bring focus and attention to each task. In this way, I feel that I am more efficient. Some days I am more successful in focusing than other days.

At Anthro-Tech, we have a geographically dispersed team that works remotely. Remote work has been a blessing for me because I am a homebody and dog mom. Dogs are great examples of living in the present moment and I’m grateful to be around mine for more of those moments. I’m also not a big fan of traffic, so the in-home commute is wonderful!

What is your proudest moment working at Anthro-Tech?

Our team had just finished extensive discovery research on the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) website and we were invited to their leadership retreat to present the roll-up of our findings and show them why a website redesign was imperative to their business amidst tightening agency budgets and competing priorities. We were able to effectively communicate the pain points of their website users, build empathy for their needs, and identify opportunities for improvements to the website that extended into efficiency and alignment for the agency at large. The leadership team approved and prioritized the project, and we went on to successfully complete a full-scale human-centered redesign in partnership with an inspiring and fun team at WDFW.

What are the values that drive you?

• I want to make complex things simple and remove unnecessary barriers.
• I am an optimist and believe that my attitude has a lot to do with whether I am successful.
• I love to embrace contradictions.
• I think it’s respectful to show up prepared and on-time.
• Multi-tasking is for suckers.

Camy’s passion for continuous process improvements merged with her abilities to relate to and communicate with others makes her an incredible asset to our team. Her love for Human-Centered Design (HCD) motivates her to help clients make products and services that provide an accessible and intuitive experience for all. Camy’s teammates agree that she is a great mentor, motivator, HCD expert, and dog mom.