Project Management Design

Resume for Kayla Block – User Interface Designer

510-***-**** (home)

510-***-**** (cell)

abqhfo@r.postjobfree.com

SUMMARY

User Interface Design Over 6 years of user interface design and usability research with increasing responsibility. Substantial expertise with consumer and enterprise applications using user-centered design principles to rapidly develop prototypes, wireframes, and storyboards. Deep expertise with cognitive inquiry, discount usability methodologies, information architecture.

Usability Testing Started usability testing programs in various organizations. Solid social science research background. Fluent in various techniques including facilitating focus groups, discount usability methods, traditional usability testing, cognitive inquiry, testing paper prototypes, heuristic evaluations, and card-sorting tests.

Requirements Analysis 5 years of requirements analysis including analyzing business objectives and customer needs.

Technical Skills Competent on all major operating systems including various Unix flavors. Solid expertise in MS Office including Excel. 3 years of experience as a software developer working on front end web-based applications. HTML, JavaScript, CSS, DHTML. Recently completed coursework in C# on the .NET platform.

Presentation, Writing and Leadership Skills Co-Moderate an international Web UI list for a division of ACM. Taught design and usability analysis skills within corporate environments and to several professional organizations. Published author. Member of Toastmasters.

Project Management 8 years of project management experience leading inter-disciplinary teams (including consultants, contractors, offshore developers, graphic designers, and UI engineers) in the implementation of user interface best practices and in implementing compelling designs.

Section 508 Compliance Initiatives Headed Section 508 (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance for software applications at VA Software and Quadramed to help secure government contracts.

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

Fostering User-Centered Organizations (white paper)

http://synchronous-city.com/ui/usercentered.doc

The Face of the Product: User Interface Evaluation - presented to San Francisco Women on the Web (SF-WoW) September 2000

Usability Testing Panel Participant - presented to San Francisco Women on the Web (SF-WoW)

May 2000

Virtual Communities: More Than Just Talk - presented for WebMaster Week September 3, 1997

Avatars! by Bruce Damer; Peachpit Press - written up in this book for

work done with SenseMedia.

The World Wide Web in Education - by Daniel Schneider and Kayla Block

http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/research/CMC/andrea95/andrea.html

Published in ANDREA, Volume 2 No 5, June 12, 1995

EXPERIENCE

2002-2003 Freelance and Consulting Oakland, CA

User Interface Design ConsultantCisco Systems – Business Analyst/Usability ConsultantEvaluating internal CRM applications used by the World Wide Sales Organization to ensure the applications meet business objectivesUtilizing NetRaker to design global online usability studiesCreation of internal web site to present the program to executive managementFacilitating team workshops to do knowledge transferPronto Networks – Design of wireless customer portal for handheld devices and computersEvaluation (heuristic analysis) of a tool used for Six Sigma project managementCreated style guide to be used for future development workRedesigned the look and feel to change it from looking like a consumer application to looking like an enterprise applicationSan Francisco AIDS Office – Creation of a web site portal to facilitate reporting to the CDC and present AIDS educational information to at-risk groups

2001-2002 VA Software Fremont, CA

Senior User Interface Designer - SourceForge

SourceForge was originally created as a portal. Overhauled the user interface to better support the target enterprise software developer market.Business and requirements analysis to determine how to repurpose the existing SourceForge application for the enterprise customer. Met with key customers to determine needs and pain points with current systems, met with key stakeholders to determine business requirements, task and work flow analysis. PRDs and interface specifications. Contributing team member for functional specifications.Created Style Guide with design and content guidelines to direct user interface design across the 3.x series of releases.Overhauled the information architecture to better organize the information and reduce mouse-clicks.Created alert-based notification system to allow users to quickly find information that is relevant to project management.Created various methods to allow users to navigate complex and data-rich informational space to quickly find what is relevant to a particular user.

2001 QuadraMed Alameda, CA

User Interface Team Lead/Requirements Analyst

Led user interface design team of contractors and in-house developers and designers to create an interface for a web-based medical software used in hospital compliance programs and inpatient and outpatient medical coding. Led user studies in the field. Requirements analysis, use cases analysis, and work flow.User meetings with customer advisory committee.Extensive use case and work flow.Received the Topaz Can-Do Award for contributions to the team.

2000-2001 Oakland, CA

Freelance User Interface Design and Usability TestingBizRate - usability testing of a browser add-in that helps consumers make purchasing decisionsBrodia - redesigned branded services sign-up procedures to improve consistency and usability for an e-wallet productBerrypick - stealth mode company. Deliverables include persona development, wireframe/schematics, information architecture, cognitive design, palette design, web design, graphicsAdvisorTeam - Company sells a personality test service. Redesigning information architecture of the site to improve scalability, reduce user confusion, and increase conversion rates.Manugistics - Designed a complex business application that allows salespeople to create winning bids on large corporate sales.

1999-2000 E-Stamp Mountain View, CA

Manager, User Interface and Tech Pubs

Interaction design, user-interface design, information design, usability testing, heuristics evaluations, extensive project management, departmental budgetary responsibility, managed 3 direct reports and various contractors and consultants.Created customer advisory council to solicit input on product features and functionality.Designed a web-based postage product within severe governmental

regulatory constraints.Taught developers about user-centered and goal-directed design.Redesign of an existing desktop-based postage product.Delivered a forward-looking user-interface that influenced corporate strategy. Developed key metrics to improve understanding of customer behavior and retention.Taught usability testing to others in the company.Evangelized user interface design principles throughout the engineering and marketing organizations.

1999 Catalyst Resources San Mateo, CA

Principal (Lead)Extensive project management, user-interface design, information design and architecture, heuristic evaluations, interaction design, graphics development as lead on various UI projects.Designed a web-based custom document generator for Cisco Systems Designed two modules for Cisco's training administration application Various projects for Hewlett-Packard's E-Commerce site

1997-1999 PlaceWare Mountain View, CA

Webmaster/Engineer

Corporate webmaster promoted into the engineering department. Product design and planning as part of a multi-disciplinary team, extensive JavaScript development, copywriting, documentation, graphics,

layout, HTML. Wrote, carried out and analyzed usability test information.

Heuristics evaluations. Some end user customer support. UI design for a java-based collaborative product. Project management of multi-disciplinary team of employees and contractors to bring up a new web site, graphic design, layout, CGI programming (PERL), JavaScript, configuration and maintenance of web server, and technical writing.Product was initially difficult to enter. Users had to read various system requirements. Wrote JavaScript so that people no longer needed to understand their configuration issues and were warned about actual problems.Usability tests suggested that people were unable to move their content into the server without assistance. Redesigned the upload UI. Later usability testing showed 100% of the subjects could upload their material without assistance and said it was easy to do so.Wrote an intro guide for the product that was presented to the board and given to key customers.Re-did the information architecture and navigation to make the site more usable.Successfully improved search engine positioning for key words chosen by marketing.Put systems into place to allow Marketing to collect data on web site usage.Taught usability testing to others in the company.

1994-1997 SenseMedia Felton, CA

Managing Director

Developed an award-winning multimedia, collaborative, distributed, object-oriented, programs interface to a MOO server. Light system administration. This was one of the first web-interfaces for live chat on the Internet. SenseMedia was on Netscape's What's Cool list for over three years and won awards from LookSmart and others.Developed an IDE that allowed people to chat, create their own web pages without knowledge of HTML, extend their virtual environment and post things to a bulletin-board type mailing listDeveloped a catalog program that allowed rapid web-site building of categorized content.

EDUCATION California School of Professional Psychology Los Angeles, CA

Master's degree in Clinical Psychology

University of California Santa Cruz, CA

Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology

AFFILIATIONS 1998 - Present Bay-CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) Member

1998 - Present Web-CHI (Computer-Human Interaction List moderator

1996 - Present SF-WoW (San Francisco Women on the Web) List moderator

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