After 10 years designing interiors for office buildings and medical facilities, Karen Mason was ready to leave the architecture world behind. But there was one thing she knew she would miss—AutoCAD. Thankfully, she found her dream job at Autodesk. Here, Karen shares her 19 years of experience with the team and what she loves about her role.
What are your day-to-day responsibilities?
My job is designing new features or updates to AutoCAD. This includes user research and learning about how our customers use the product. It also involves designing new or improved workflows and user interface elements; testing new features as they are being developed; interacting with our customers; and other ways.
What is your favorite part of your job?
Seeing a new feature come to life and hearing customers’ positive feedback!
What makes you most proud with your work on AutoCAD?
I’m always proud of adding or updating features that I know would have benefited me when I was using AutoCAD. I would have died to have Layer properties per viewport or polyline multi-functional grips.
What gets you out of bed and into work every day?
Working with such talented, dedicated, and enthusiastic co-workers is the reason. If it weren’t for my very skillful developers, the features I design could never come to life.
What is one of your favorite stories about interacting with AutoCAD users?
We invited a long-time customer to the office last year. He had casually mentioned his dream would be to come to the Autodesk offices and show us how he uses our software and make suggestions. When I met the customer, he hugged me like I was a long-lost relative! I love that story because it taught me to ask for what you want in life. You never know what wish might be granted! And it’s nice to know our customers love us as much as the software!
Behind the Scenes of the AutoCAD Team is a series spotlighting Autodesk employees devoted to developing AutoCAD further every day. Check out all of the installments here.
