Kate Medina is a Design/ UX researcher that focuses on human-centered design. She specializes in developing joyful and simple insights and believes that by observing human behaviors and attitudes when building products and services, it will lead to more inclusive, tangible, and sustainable outcomes.

Kate was born in LA, California. At her hundred-day ceremony- a traditional Korean rite celebrating a child's first 100 days, featuring a symbolic activity in which the baby chooses an item foreshadowing their future, she chose a pencil. Since then, she has never been able to put one down. She was considered the “art kid” and painted murals on the walls and drew up posters for her teachers. She knew she had wanted to incorporate art in all she did in the future, but she also craved doing much more.

Kate went to UC Berkeley and decided to incorporate art into her studies by creating her own interdisciplinary major. She was struck by the inequities that occur to those in urban spaces so she combined environmental science, ethnic studies, design, and obtained a law minor. During college, Kate focused most of her efforts in DEI pursuits in her time in the bridges Multicultural Resource Center, a student run and led organization catering to low income, first generation, students of color. Within bridges, she was Retention Director turned Internal Executive for the Mixed at Berkeley Recruitment and Retention Center (MRRC) which focused on creating community and offering resources for those identifying as mixed race.

Post undergrad, Kate became a human-centered Design Researcher at IDEO through the RepresentED Color by Design (CxD) fellowship, a 9-month program for BIPOC designers to leverage human-centered design to build useful products and services for diverse communities. During the program, she was able offer her unique perspective and skills to ensure stronger final outcomes. During her time at IDEO, Kate has had experience within health, higher education, branding. She flourished in this creative space, and became an advocate of equitable and accessible design. Harnessing her DEI background, Kate uplifts user stories through her unique and creative interdisciplinary design insights. With a proven track record of transforming behavioral insights into actionable design strategies, she specializes in qualitative fieldwork that pivots on understanding underlying motivations and behaviors and transforming them into tangible and thoughtful products.

She is currently looking to continue her design/UX research in other creative and tech focused fields.