Biography

After a brief stint as the sole User Interface Designer at ATG, the positive impact of having UI Design as part of the Products and Technology team became apparent. The attitude of the project teams went from disdain, distrust and disinterest in receiving assistance with UI Design to their team management actively seeking out design team resources. I built the User Interface Design team from the ground up through hiring (3 new hires in less than a year) and the inclusion of outside consulting resources into the team. My team now consists of twelve User Interface specialists including usability engineers, user interface designers, visual designers and user interface developers. As the UI Design Manager I am ultimately responsible for the look and feel, usability, consistency and overall direction of the user experience of all ATG applications.

In 2005 ATG announced a new product line called ATG Wisdom. Wisdom was the consolidation of four disparate applications at ATG: Primus Knowledge Center, Amacis Communication Center, ATG Commerce Assist and ATG Adaptive Customer Assistance. Once we started redesigning the products it quickly became evident to me that consolidating all four applications under one UI and one technology base would give ATG the leadership role in the market. I worked with the product managers and key stakeholders to get consensus on that vision and redirect the individual projects to become one. Upon the announcement of the new product suite ATG’s analyst ratings went up and ATG moved into the visionary leader role in the analyst quadrants. Our ratings and placements have continued to improve since then.

In my time at ATG I have created the User Interface team itself, introduced and developed the role of Business Analyst, created a formalized process for the ATG Product Development Cycle, introduced and developed functional specification and wireframe standards and templates and introduced global help and messaging systems into the UIs. I have initiated several documentation and standardization projects including ATG styleguides, a design pattern library, Dojo widget library and icon repository. My team is the most cohesive of those in the Products and Technology group; I have developed a culture of collaboration so that each team member shares new ideas and technologies and works together to develop agreed upon standards. We have weekly design reviews where anyone can volunteer to present their work in progress, a new technology, an item they would like to standardize or a design challenge they would like input on.

I invest my time in my team, ensuring that they receive the mentoring and support they need to excel. Over the course of nine months I was able to help a consistently enthusiastic mid level User Interface Designer strengthen his exposure within the company and leadership skills so that he could reach the next level. We recently promoted him to Senior User Interface Designer. In another case I was able to bring a problem employee back from the brink through careful monitoring, mentoring and encouragement. He is now one of our star developers. I have monthly one to one meetings with my team members where they set the agenda so that they have the opportunity to elicit and give feedback and discuss what they feel is important to them. On more than one occasion these sessions have resulted in new initiatives for the team or prompted me to schedule a special project for that individual so that they could explore something of interest to them.

Prior to ATG I was a Senior Consultant with CSC’s netXperience Practice where I brought eight years of experience to my position as Architectural Specialist. My experience as a Project/Team Manger demonstrated my efficiency in client interaction, project planning and organization. One of my unique abilities is to not only participate in and lead business analysis requirements gathering but also interpret how those requirements should translate into the visual, technical and usability aspects of the user interface. I have a strong process background, having taken projects through business requirements gathering, work and review sessions, storyboard and prototyping, visual design iterations and reviews, and the development and reviews of the UI and the final application.

I believe that my years of experience both at ATG and CSC have given me a unique perspective on user centered design, one that could be a strong asset to a User Interface Design team.

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