Hayley Grant is all about the details.

After all, she gushes with intricate details about how she landed her Lexmark internship several years ago, which eventually led to a full-time position out of college. 

"It was like fate," she said. "It was meant to be."

While Hayley was traveling on vacation in Ukraine, she got that fateful call from Lexmark. Unfortunately for her, she was on a tour of Chernobyl, and the WiFi kept cutting out.

"I had to switch to roaming on my cell," Hayley said, adding that she was also sharing her portfolio on her mobile phone as part of the interview. "I ended up with a $170 phone bill for the roaming charges. My first paycheck went to paying that off."

Nevertheless, it was all worth it, by Hayley's account. 

She started in 2019 as a UX design intern and was hired onto the software side of the company after her internship ended. In 2022, she moved into the product delivery side as a usability and accessibility engineer.

"When I switched teams to product delivery, we wanted to focus on four areas: set up, service, messaging and the panel design," Hayley said, adding that it was all about making the message "more relatable and understandable" to users and service technicians alike.

In other words, it's up to Hayley and the global design teams in Lexington, Ky. and Cebu, Philippines to figure out how to "meet the users where they are."

"We get the honor of being the voice of our user and understanding their needs with our products," she said. "Printing is not like a luxury pastime hobby. Printing is a productive tool that they go through during their day – to get the task done. We want to make sure it's quick and easy, so they can get along with their day."

She knows a thing or two about complexity and being lost in translation. After all, Hayley learned to speak three different languages: German, Finnish and some Swedish, which she learned as part of her studies as a linguistics major. She even lived in Finland for 6 years, while getting her degree in digital service design. 

"Living abroad and understanding the ways different people communicate and interact with the world has definitely helped me sharpen my UX skills," Hayley said.

For the new Lexmark 9-Series family of printers and MFPs, Hayley was instrumental to simplifying and improving the service experience as well as the user interface and accessibility for visually impaired users. "Understanding different perspectives, environments and situations is vital to our job. For the new 9-series, our ability to speak to and for our global users has given Lexmark a leg up on creating experiences that are impactful and inclusive," she said.

Lexmark is working with the Bluegrass Council of the Blind in Lexington to test the 9-Series and has also revamped an internal "Accessibility Council" to help further educate others on the importance of accessibility. 

Following the launch of the 9-Series earlier this summer, it's onto the next project.

"Just because the 9-Series is out doesn't mean we're done," Hayley said. "We're only getting started!"