With over 15 years of experience as usability expert, UI programmer and technical lead, my career has focused around web development. I have had a chance to try on quite a few hats, from being a System Administrator to being a User Interface Designer and a Web Programmer, and on to leading UI web application development teams and finally into developing the architecture for large-scale UI projects.
Languages I have proficiency in include:
- JavaScript
- PHP
- AJAX
- CSS and HTML
- Perl
- C, C++ and Java (though all are rusty)
My strengths are working in usability and UI development, especially in the area of educational software. Because my career has emerged from being a developer myself, I tend to gravitate towards positions that allow me to work closely with the heads-down coders, as well as working with the end users, sales/marketing, and administration. This allows me both to develop interfaces that meet end-user and business needs, and to design them in a way that allows them to easily be translated into standard design patterns, ultimately making them easier to understand and code.
In addition to designing with development in mind, I also work towards customer buy-in during all stages of planning, design and testing. To do this, I've used a large number of standard usability techniques, including:
- brainstorming sessions
- heuristic evaluation
- accessibility standards
- expert evaluation
- focus groups
- scenarios
- questionnaires
- story boards
By use of these techniques, I have developed wireframes, rapid prototypes and computer-basedprototypes, both traditionally and iteratively.
To provide a better understanding of my work and research, my résumé and usability portfolio are both available here. Also available is the past and present research that I have performed.