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've been thinking about what it actually means to work with AI well, and the answer looks more like creative direction than prompt engineering: set intent up front, calibrate as it works, notice when something's drifted before it becomes a real problem. Lately that's meant testing the method on harder problems, prototyping agentic frameworks for human-robot interaction and experimenting with MCP (Model Context Protocol) to give AI more durable context to work from.
I'm writing a series on this for LinkedIn. The first piece is already out: How to Think Like a Creative Director in the Age of AI. New essays go to subscribers first.
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.