Back when she was a high-school student in regional New South Wales, Natalie Johnson already knew she wanted to study design at UTS.
"I wanted to come to UTS since I was 13 years old," says Natalie.
"In everything I looked at and read about online at the time, it was the most recognised degree in terms of giving you the foundations and the ability to think about design."
But, while she had a clear sense of what she wanted to study, what she didn't know was just where her degree would take her.
Now, nine years after graduating, she's a lead designer with tech giant Atlassian where she's pitching and developing new products for the global market.
Where tech and creativity meet
The daughter of a music teacher and an IT teacher, Natalie grew up in an environment where creativity and technology were held in equal regard.
As a teenager, she taught herself to code, and she loved mucking around on the computer to create things that were both beautiful and functional.
When the time came to apply to university, the UTS Visual Communication program was where she wanted to be.
She studied user experience design, web development and creative coding, as well as more traditional design pursuits such as typography, iconography and design history.
The degree was everything she'd hoped for: collaborative, cross-disciplinary, hands-on and highly relevant to industry.
One of UTS's strengths is that they really encourage you to engage with the first principles of design, which is the strongest foundation you could have for entering the workplace
— Natalie Johnson
After graduation, she found herself working at the intersection of design and code as a front-end developer and then as a user experience designer for agencies including Universal Favourite and Pollen.
But when she stumbled across a job at global tech company Atlassian, she knew she'd found her place.
"I really felt like I belonged on the strategy side of design," she says.
"And they said, 'Oh you're a designer that can code? Welcome!'"
Bringing big ideas to life
At Atlassian, Natalie rose through the ranks quickly, from product designer to senior designer to lead designer, bouncing between different teams to build out her skill set.
Through it all, she kept one eye on the market, which changed dramatically when COVID-19 restrictions emerged.
With clients crying out for new digital collaboration tools, Natalie and some colleagues put their heads together to find a solution.
"We decided to pitch the business to create a new tool, which was a whiteboard," she says.
That product became Confluence whiteboards, a new collaborative working platform that can be used within Atlassian's flagship Confluence and Jira applications. The whiteboards offer a free-form approach to brainstorming and sharing ideas.
"Jira and Confluence are typically thought of as more structured tools, so having this unstructured form of expression available within these platforms is a big selling point for customers," Natalie says.
The process of bringing a new product to life has been hugely satisfying, and it has also called on all of Natalie's design and technical experience at once.
"I love the macro and the micro, so being able to think about this broader strategy and pitching this big idea, but then also being able to obsess over those smaller details and ponder deeply about the opacity of a certain colour," she says.
"I love that I can do both in the one role. I think that's what's most compelling to me."
Confluence whiteboards are currently in beta testing, and they're expected to be released for general availability in 2024.
But Natalie's work on the project is far from over: later this year, she'll relocate to San Francisco to support the product rollout and ongoing development.
