Catherine Smith-Desbiens

Catherine Smith-Desbiens

UI Designer in Canada, She/Her

About

I am a senior Web and UI Designer specialized in digital products and video game interfaces. I love to create streamlined designs with engagement and accessibility in mind. I am the co-founder of Girls on Games, a weekly gaming podcast and welcoming online community for gamers of all sorts.

🍁 EN / FR

Contact

Instagram
Twitter

Work Experience

2021 — Now
Montreal Canada

Create, mock-up and integrate in-game seasonal assets. Design, integrate and debug the game’s UI elements (HUD and Menu). Participate in task and project scoping. Support UI and Gameplay Programming.

Current Project : For Honor
Shipped Features : Crossplay matchmaking, Hero Skins, Dominion game mode improvements, new end of match user flow, revamped new player onboarding and tutorials.

2017 — 2021
Montreal Canada

Collaborate with the marketing and ecommerce teams on compelling multi-channel campaigns to promote Ubisoft’s offering of games and consummer products. Contribute to the Ubisoft Store’s brand strategy and design system.

2016 — 2017
Montreal Canada

Collaborate with our clients to create memorable digital
campaigns. Create and produce marketing assets. Maintain and update TAKEOFF Creative’s website and social pages.

2015 — 2016
Montreal, Canada

Web design and integration of content, marketing
campaigns and newsletters for Hyba.

2015 — 2015
Montreal, Canada

Project management and art direction for small business
website creation and updates.

2010 — 2015
Web Designer and Integrator at Bell Media

Collaborate on clients' digital strategy by creating and integrating banner ads, website take-overs, contests and newsletters. Create marketing material for the radio stations' promo initiatives like posters and promotional items.

Website upkeep and maintenance. Social media strategies and monitoring. Web design and interactive projects like website rebrand, banner ads, contests and widgets. Video production and editing. Graphic design like posters and newspaper ads.

For: Virgin Radio, CHOM FM, CJAD AM and VRAK TV.

2008 — 2010
Montreal, Canada

Preparing documents for translation. Formatting documents post-translation. CAT, formatting and localization of Desktop Publishing formats.

Side Projects

Ongoing

Girls on Games is a weekly video game and geek culture podcast. We pride ourselves in being a welcoming community for all gamers.

Writing

2019

They say that you should stop and smell the flowers. During your busy day, bustling about, you should always stop to take notice of something beautiful and enjoy it. My version of this is “stop and Instagram the flowers”. It’s also something I do when playing games, and photo mode is the latest tool in my digital photography arsenal.

2017

The unexpected thing about grief is that it hits you the hardest in the months following your loss. Not as it happens, not at the funeral, not even right after the funeral, but weeks later. At least, it did for me. It came in like a tidal wave, and I was woefully unprepared to be submerged. You need to hold on to the things that will help you float back to the surface. One of the buoys that I latched on to was Stardew Valley.

Education

2005 — 2008
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Graphic Design at Université du Québec en Outaouais
Gatineau, Canada