Seeking a position as Director of Customer Experience for an interactive or life sciences technology product team. Interactive products include Internet and Broadband products, devices, and software. I wish to work in the San Francisco or San Diego bay areas. References are available upon request.

January 2003 – 2004 Haverstock & Owens LLP (Sub-Contract)

User Interface Intellectual Property Consultant

Haverstock & Owens is a Palo Alto Law firm specializing in Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights. I am working with them as a domain expert, reviewing User Interface patent applications, and editing them for submission.

January 2002 – January 2003. Nuasis Inc

User Interface Architect

Nuasis provides enterprise solutions for customer contact management. As the User Interface architect, I was responsible for all aspects of the user interfaces for our product. This was a remarkably sophisticated product, which required dozens of completely separate interfaces, ranging from web-based application server management, to high performance software telephones. To optimize the performance of the product, I developed several novel UI components. Customers have been delighted with these innovations, and Nuasis has filed patents on my work.

Design

-         Defined technical and user requirements from marketing requirements.

-         Developed formal criteria for selecting interface technologies, and used those criteria to select the interfaces' foundations. Across the product line, used Java JSP, Microsoft’s Win32 and 1.1 Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT), and Java Swing from Sun’s 1.4 JVM.

-         Acted as chief user advocate. Worked with executive staff to document requirements and to design the user interfaces. Provided expertise in human performance and interaction technologies.

-         Created mockups and working prototypes of the interface screens and components. Created final design documentation and technical notes for all interfaces.

-         Coded initial structure for all screens and components, and subsequently forwarded the code to other members of the technical staff.

-         Developed critical new intellectual property in the form of patentable UI components and technologies.

January 2001 – January 2002 Cariocas Inc.

Interaction Design Lead

Cariocas’s mission was to provide enterprises with new online games developed from the scientific understanding of peoples’ economic and emotional behaviors. These games were developed to provide experiences that would shape consumers' online behaviors to meet particular business goals.

Design

-         Helped develop products from scientific game-theoretical descriptions into product requirements documents, GUI mockups, interactive demos and prototypes.

-         Created the actionable technical specifications for the user experience that was then used by the technical teams to execute product development.

-         Acted as chief user advocate. Promoted the use of innovative human factors design, interactivity, and esthetics.

Product Management

-         Trained two new product managers in software specification, standards, and the technology and processes of software development. -       Created the plans of record for the product development process and the Client Centered Services group.

Technical Contributor

-         Developed the architecture of the User Experience Library, a class library of system components that defined the behavior of the Cariocas’ platform from the user’s perspective.

-       Developed Cariocas’ strategic vision for user interface technologies.

October 1999 - October 2000 Zatso Inc.

Director of Design

Zatso used the Internet to deliver a hypermedia (text, video, graphics and games) newscast tailored to the viewer's own interests. This gave viewers the ability to screen out unwanted stories, and to explore more deeply those in which they were interested. Zatso hypermedia stories were algorithmically assembled from local television stations and international information vendors into an easy-to-understand story index.

Design

-         Developed the GUI of the product, prepared the documentation of the page flow and interface behavior, and managed the implementation of the customer experience.

-         Developed interactive games that supplemented the news stories.

-       Created the task-action grammars and other technical and marketing documentation.

Product Management

-         Collaborated with executive management to develop strategic product requirements.

-         Developed the product defect taxonomy for Quality Assurance, and managed its integration into the company’s defect tracking system.

-       Performed in-depth investigations of broadband content offerings such as multimedia, interactive communities, set-top technologies, and new models of branding and advertising.

Usability Management

-         Conducted weekly focus groups, product tests, and surveys for Zatso's, competitors’ and partners’ products.

-         Conducted usability tests, and wrote reports on the results.

-       Developed novel algorithms to analyze Internet traffic logs, and thereby create detailed maps of the actual user experience of Zatso’s Internet products.

May 1995 - September 1999 Hewlett-Packard Company

While holding various positions at HP, I consulted for, collaborated with, and managed teams to integrate data-driven customer requirements with best-practice design principles to exploit untapped market demand and build products that delighted customers.

Interaction Design Manager

-         Managed a team of developers, usability engineers and designers at HP’s Customer Data & Design Lab, a self-funded team of user experience experts.

-         Grew business 175% in two quarters by acquiring new clients and developing new services for existing clients.

-         Hired and managed external graphic designers and engineers.

Product Manager - Internet Appliance Operation

-         Developed the system specification, navigation flow diagrams, static mockups, and interactive prototypes for a small-business Internet appliance.

-         Designed the interfaces and customer experience.

Lead Design Consultant - Consumer Products Division.

-         Provided various consulting design services including product styling, configuration layout, ergonomic and usability studies, software integration and product documentation.

Concept Designer and Product Manager - Enterprise Account Relationship Library.

-         Defined requirements, designed the customer experience, and managed the team.

Education

Doctoral Candidacy, University of Michigan, Cognitive PsychologyMS, University of Michigan, Cognitive PsychologyBA, University of California at Irvine, PsychologyBFA, University of California at Irvine, Studio Art: Graphics and Photography

Publications

Hymes, C. M. and Olson, G. M (1992) Unblocking Brainstorming Through the Use of a Simple Group Editor. In Jon Turner and Robert Kraut, (Ed.) CSCW `92 ‑ACM 1992 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work Hymes, C. M. (1996) Conflicting Class Structures Between the Object Oriented Paradigm and Users Concepts. 3rd Conference of the Australasian Cognitive Science Society. Brisbane, Australia.Hymes, C. M (1997) Quick but Not So Dirty Web Design: Applying Empirical Conceptual Clustering Techniques to Organize Hypertext Content. Designing Interactive Systems Conference Proceedings, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Technical Experience

Internet technologies

Broadband products and technologies, personalization, electronic shopping, search engines, groupware, web-based configuration and management, TCP/IP security.

User Interfaces and Hardware Platforms

Java, Swing, XML, HTML, JavaScript, Microsoft Windows and ActiveX (COM), consumer devices (personal computers, handheld input devices and laptops), rack-mounted devices, collaboration and meeting facility design, usability lab design.

Languages

Java, JavaScript, J++, Visual Basic, Perl, and Rexx. Familiar with C++, and PL/SQL

Database Technologies

JDBC, Microsoft ADO, MYSQL, Oracle 9i, Microsoft Access