Manager Design

Dave Cortright

Los Altos, CA

*** -***- ****

*************@*****.***

To be a senior designer and a leader on a smart, passionate and affable team creating simple,

Objective

useful, usable and successful products that delight customers and achieve business goals. To

be an integral member of a team that gets things done using constantly improving, agile

processes. To inject an essential customer-centric view into the product vision and business

model. To add design value in all stages of product development, from concept to release.

18 years of experience crafting customer-focused visions and designing user interfaces for

Qualifications

consumer and enterprise products. 10 years managing projects, driving them from concept to

release on schedule. A resourceful and pragmatic ideas guy who can scale from strategic

planning all the way down to small design details and CSS layout bugs.

VMware . Palo Alto, CA . Staff Engineer, User Experience . Project Octopus and Horizon

Experience

Sep 10 now Designed the end user experience for Project Octopus, a new enterprise file sync and

collaboration product. Designed for multiple platforms: web, Mac, Windows and iOS.

Currently integrating with Horizon and other products for a simple, unified user experience.

Oracle . Redwood Shores, CA . Consulting Member of Technical Staff . Enterprise Manager

Apr 09 Sep 10

Wrote use cases and designed UI for important new features: Chargeback and Consolidation

Planner. Wrote design patterns for the team s library, including an innovative new time picker.

Venrock . Palo Alto, CA . Chief Design Officer . Entrepreneur in Residence program

Oct 07 Nov 08

Worked on a 5-person team to help entrepreneurs define, create, and launch startups. Led

the product design and kept the vision customer-focused on over a dozen startup ideas.

Delivered value across all stages of product development: customer-focused vision, personas,

scenarios, concept maps, information architectures, task flows, wireframes, interface text,

visual assets, and basic cross-browser HTML + CSS + JavaScript coding and debugging.

Partners and colleagues at Venrock have said of my work: Your app looks beautiful; Your

design is a massive huge upgrade from what was there before; Your interface blows the

competition away; Your design is superb, it really grabs you; Your help has been invaluable.

Yahoo . Sunnyvale, CA . Senior Interaction Designer . Yahoo Messenger & Yahoo Mash

Feb 05 Oct 07

Developed and championed a vision for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 based on an improved user

experience rather than simply adding new features. Completely redesigned the main window

to simplify the experience and promote engagement by focusing on the friends list, online

activity, self-expression, and available communication channels. (Details are in my portfolio.)

Designed the voice user experience for PC-to-PC calls and the premium PC-to-phone service.

A subsequent customer survey found that Yahoo! Messenger holds a huge advantage in

perceived ease of use. Russell Shaw of ZDNet.com said, I love Yahoo! Messenger with Voice

7.5 It has a far more intuitive interface than Skype I have a new favorite. (March 23, 2006)

Wrote over 40 articles on product vision and design for an internal competitive intelligence

blog to help business leaders understand the role of design in creating successful products.

Redesigned the web search bar at the bottom of the main window, which resulted in 30%

more searches, 42% more revenue-per-search and 85% more revenue over $1 million/year.

8

Dynamic time strip

Patent 6,828,989 9

Microsoft . Mountain View, CA

Apr 98 Jan 05 9 10am in 5 minutes

Lead Program Manager . Mac Office Entourage

May 03 Jan 05 10

Led a team of three PMs working simultaneously on two separate releases. Designed and

managed the Office 2004 flagship feature Project Center. Spearheaded a partnership with 11

Microsoft s anti-spam team to integrate their latest technology into Entourage. Created the

Office 2008 feature My Day based on personas and scenarios derived from customer data.

12

Iterated designs with feedback from focus groups and usability tests. MacUser UK said,

Entourage has been refined, and the changes have really improved its usability. (May 2004)

1

Lead Program Manager . MSN for Mac OS X

Apr 01 Apr 03

2

Drove this project through the entire cycle of vision, planning, design, implementation,

debugging, and release. Managed an external visual design firm to create polished, Mac-like

3

visuals. Helped conduct usability tests. MacAddict gave it an A+ for its user interface saying,

It s much less cluttered and easier to understand than AOL. (August 2003)

4

.

Oct 99 Mar 01 Lead Program Manager Entourage 2001

While managing a team of 3 PMs, I designed, project managed, and released Microsoft s first 5

Mac PIM as a part of Mac Office X. Stephen Windstorm in BusinessWeek said, Entourage is a

good contact manager and the best e-mail program I have ever used. (October 30, 2000) 6

Program Manager . Outlook Express 5

Apr 98 Oct 99 9

Designed innovative email features: auto-fill addressing (patented), junk mail filter, mailing list

manager, and two later adopted by Apple cycle through windows and email address objects. 10

Claris (subsidiary of Apple Computer) . Santa Clara, CA . Interface Designer . Claris Emailer

Aug 96 Feb 98

Winner of MacWorld s Editor s Choice award for Best Internet Client of 1998.

Oracle . Redwood Shores, CA . Interface Designer . Developer/ 2000 R2.0

July 95 Aug 96

Stanford University . Palo Alto, CA

Education

June 95 M.S. Computer Science

Concentration in Human-Computer Interaction

University of Michigan . Ann Arbor, MI

May 93 B.S. Engineering Physics

Magna Cum Laude and Class Honors

Recognizing User Needs where Users = Penguins and Redesigning the Buffet Line;

Publications

StealThisIdea.com, April 2007 and May 2006 respectively

An Insider s View of Interface Design at Microsoft;

ACM Interactions Vol. 7 No. 2, March/April 2000. pp. 39 40

SportScope: A User-Centered Design for Baseball Fans;

CHI 96 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference, ACM Press 1996. pp. 297 298

Sole inventor of 6,828,989 Graphically represented dynamic time

Patents

strip for displaying user-accessible time-dependent data objects;

December 7, 2004

Co-inventor on five other patents:

6,624,831 . 6,829,607 . 6,895,426 . 6,952,805 . 7,360,165

Time-picker widget

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