Employee Spotlight: Nick Hart
By: Mondo Robot
Tags: Product Design, Design, Employees, Digital Marketing, Product Designer

An interview with Nick Hart, Senior Product Designer at Mondo Robot

Tell us a little bit about your experience?

I have been at Mondo Robot for about 2 years. I fell in love with the fundamentals of graphic design early on and I’ve been following my passion in UX and animation since college. It all started with an interest in problem-solving, typography, and storytelling.

What are your core job responsibilities?

Being an advocate for ethical design and really owning the design front of projects. This includes working with stakeholders and users to maximize the impact a product or website has and ensuring a high level of quality is achieved.

What advice would you give someone trying to get into your profession?

Start with passion and let that propel you to keep making things. Actively seek out what’s happening in the field and what excites people and learn how to replicate it. I always see inspiring work and feel a strong desire to “figure it out.”

What kind of projects do you like to work on?

I like to work on projects where I can have a direct impact on business and user challenges and advocate for strong design. I feel absolutely fulfilled in life when I can do my part to bring positive change on an app or website. Also, any time animation is involved I’m stoked.

What is your dream client and/or project?

I think it’d be awesome to work on an app for a TV network, like HBO Max, or Disney+. The content is exciting for me and TV’s offer a newer space to design for.

What is the most challenging thing about your job?

Discovering key unknown-unknowns of a project. It can be heartbreaking to unearth a key piece of information late into a project timeline and do your best to make quick pivots. Gaining as much insight as possible about a project has an intangible finish line.

What do you like about working at Mondo Robot?

The culture. Hands down. The people here are amazing, intelligent, and inspiring individuals. I love getting to work with amazing people and build humbling products.

What tools help you with your day-to-day?

Notion has become my favorite note app. I constantly make to-do lists and log all client/meeting interactions with it. Then there’s Figma, which is a beast of a design tool and allows for pretty good prototyping fine-touches. Outside of that, After Effects is what I use to get the highest-fidelity animations. Zoom is also used, being fully remote, it’s an excellent tool for face-time with people and when paired with Figma, remote collaboration has never been more effective.

What do you do in your spare time?

Workout, read, mountain bike, snowboard, mycology, produce electronic music, video games. I’m constantly attaching myself to non-work-related things to keep my brain stimulated and fresh!

What’s a fun fact about you many people may not know?

I’ve been cutting my own locks for almost 10 years now, and I’m getting pretty good at it!

If you were stranded on a deserted island and could bring one thing, what would it be?

Cosmos, by Carl Segan. I can read that book forever and never get bored.

Where’s your favorite place in the world?

The meditation depths of my mind :) but I also hope to visit Hawaii soon.

If you could meet anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Kurt Cobain. I grew up listening to Nirvana and it had such a big impact on me. Unfortunately, he died 2 years after I was born so naturally, his legacy mystified me.

Three words to best describe you:

Empathetic, Patient, Woo!

What’s your favorite food?

Sushi or wings

What's your personal quip?

Wizards don’t die