SUMMARY:

• Solutions oriented professional consultant with over 20 years of significant, progressive experience in software development, focused on analysis and design of user experience (UI).
• 15 years full life - cycle front-end development and design for Coldfusion, JSP and ASP-based systems to include: full life cycle planning, business requirements gathering and analysis, front-end framework and information architecture development, taxonomy development and implementation.
• 3 years Documentum experience (RMA)
• 15 years wireframe and site structure/diagrams development, user scenarios development, content development and management, project management and technical leadership, screen designs/treatments, client-side scripting.
• 15 years persona development (ergonomics and web-based applications)
• 15 years knowledge and content design, linguistic schematics, ethnographic vocabularies, controlled vocabulary design, taxonomies, and metadata design and content enhancement (XML).
• 20 years ergonomic, software and web usability testing including development of usability questionnaires and remarks, conduct multiple usability testing sessions at Confidential, Confidential, Confidential, AMEX, etc Setup first Usability Lab at Confidential .
• UML modeling, online user documentation and other technical writing, computer- and web-based training.
• Front-end development skills and tools used include: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, DHTML, basic AJAX, XML, XSL, and Adobe CS3 suite.
• 15 years experience in computer graphics presentation, design, and marketing communications including corporate identity, multimedia, marketing collaterals, photo illustration/manipulation, CD/DVD art covers, government proposals, technical manuals, advertisements, poster presentations, 35mm color slides for business and education/research, hardware installation, support, and training.
• 15 years analyzing requirements, use cases/tasks/scenarios, iterative application of usability heuristics throughout the design process. Expertise with usability testing methods, including heuristic evaluation, observations, contextual inquiry, focus group interviewing, and surveying.
• Significant Print Design experience in Marketing Environments
• Proven ability for leading and managing interaction design efforts while reaching goals and meeting deadlines within budget in a collaborative environment.
• Highly experienced in designing repeatable processes to streamline development efforts.
• Thorough understanding of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) and the application of product development and re-engineering best practices.
• Strong knowledge of User Centered Design (UCD) process and methodology, enterprise business applications development, and product re-engineering.
• Recognized for high ethical standards in all work performed.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Graphic & Design Tools: Adobe Web Premium CS3 - all components (PhotoShop, Flash, Dreamweaver, LiveCycle Designer, Device Central, Fireworks, Contribute), Device Central, Macromedia Director, MS Frontpage, Adobe Premiere, Image Ready/ImageStyler, Corel Draw, Visio, Extensis and Kai plug-ins for Photoshop, Asymmetrix Toolbook, RoboHelp, Adobe Acrobat/Distiller, MS Office, PageMaker, MS Sharepoint portal administrationVideo Final Cut Pro, AVID, AvidXpress, Combustion

Programming Languages: Java, SQL

Operating Systems: Windows NT 4.0/XP/2000/ME/95/98, Unix

Web Technologies: HTML, DHTML, XML, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, JSP, Cold fusion, FrontPage 2000

COTS: Documentum (RMA), MS Sharepoint portal administration, WebLogic, Netobjects Fusion

EBusiness: IBM Websphere Commerce Suite

IDE: MS Office, Minitab

Business Modeling tools: Rational Rose, Rational RequisitePro, TestDirector, Microsoft Visio, MS Project, Enterprise Architect

QA Testing Tools: Rational Robot, TestManager

Defect Tracking Tools: Test Director, Bugzilla

Methodologies: RUP, Regression and Path Analysis, Canonical Correlation using SPSSx, SAS (direct statistical applications and methodologies)

General Business: Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Visio

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidentia

Usability Engineer/ Sr. Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Requirements gathering, reviewing, and prioritizing project requirements in collaboration with business and technical teams
• Defining user needs, preferences, and behaviors through qualitative and quantitative research/analysis
• Documenting usability goals, recommendations and standards/guidelines at appropriate intervals in the project lifecycle
• Designing and prototyping user interfaces (typically in HTML) to demonstrate projected standards
• Conceptualizing, designing, building and delivering prototypes for user interface(s) and skinning options
• Conceptualizing, designing, building and delivering sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes and documentation that clearly articulate site/application structure and organization
• Conducted remote and onsite usability testing at various points in the design process (and post-launch)
• Collaborating with creative teams and Web developers to build the front-end interface
• Providing close attention to detail in quality reviews to ensure proper integration of the UI with back-end functionality
• Conducting usability (heuristic) evaluations and presenting results as a finished report and/or in PPT presentations
• Supporting sales teams and representing usability capabilities to potential or current clients
• Collaborating with the rest of the user experience group to expand, evolve and update techniques, work products and deliverables to reflect latest trends and best practices.
• Analysis and reporting on usability issues on projects ranging from one-off screen designs to portfolio/suite/application flows and global behaviors.
• Planning and conducting various usability inspections/tests, including paper prototyping, heuristic evaluations, contextual inquiries, controlled lab studies, user needs analyses, and focus groups.
• Analysis and testing of research findings and providing actionable recommendations with an appropriate balance between usability ideals and business needs.
• Lead developer of Style Guides and heuristics checklists
• Researching and publishing usability standards. Tracking performance of goals throughout the development process.
• Socializing Standards by Teaching/Lecturing on User-Centered Design through training, lectures, course creation and delivery.
• Participating in the analysis of business and user needs in order to balance both in designing the best possible final workflows and interfaces, which increase user efficiency and promote the goals of the business.
• Created usability protocols and surveys for analyzing user experience and for data collection.
• Collected and analyzed usability data and presented to business, development, and Governance groups.
• Reviewed new technologies for 508 compliance adherence.

Confidential

Sr. Business Analyst/Usability Engineer

• Gathered, Analyzed and Documented Requirements both High Level Business Requirements and System Level Requirements.
• Gathered and documented data level requirements and analytical business and technical requirements.
• Developed new reporting and issue resolution process and managed all enterprise reporting and issue resolution processes.
• Developed new business processes and assigned tasks and responsibilities based on project roles and ensured the process was carried out as designed.
• Assisted Project Manager and SME's on all management effort, issue resolution and technical effort.
• Used Enterprise Architect to manage requirements, create attribute matrix views, traceability tree reports, exported and imported requirement extracts.
• Used Bugzilla to assign defects and change control requests and tracked issues to successful completion through Bugzilla
• Facilitated JAD sessions for identifying new system requirements, new integration use cases and business requirements.
• Involved in the data mapping effort from source systems to target systems and created data mapping documents for the data warehousing effort.
• Gathered information required for creating metadata documents and prepared final metadata documents.
• Conducted competitive analysis of features, functionality and usability of web sites; derived recommendations and best practices for development of a records management system
• Wrote functional requirements and use cases for back-end retail site administration system
• Worked with web developer in optimizing functionality, labeling, and usability of back-end retail site administration system Held reviews with stakeholders, regions, PM's and SME's to verify and analyze requirements and sign-off on prototypes.
• Created work flow diagrams for new processes.
• Identified the CTQ's (Critical to Quality) from Project SME's.
• Used SAS, regression and path analysis for Data Risk Management (DRM)
• Was instrumental in defining and maintaining a streamlined process that saved considerable amount of time, resources and capital
• Responsible for gathering, documenting and signing off for Crosswalk effort for Regional training.
• Coordinated with the Data Conversion team by providing solutions and answering queries and business support.
• Conducted meetings with the development, and testing teams to clarify integration use cases, high-level business requirements and system level requirements.
• Co-ordinate with the PCMA and QA team and followed all PCMA and QA guidelines for requirements gathering, documenting and package creation.
• Co-ordinate with the Requirements Management team and followed all guidelines set forth in RMP.
• Assisted Modelers, ETL Developers and testers by answering questions and guided them in the modeling, development and testing effort.
• Assisted in the development of test plans and test cases and used Test Director to maintain and manage Test Cases.
• Wrote and ran queries for unit testing, integration testing and system testing.
• Assisted Data Analysts by running UAT for views from database.
• Held reviews with the business community for reviewing the existing use case specifications written for the customer and identified functionalities that are in scope and out of scope based on project budgetary and manpower constraints. Helped write use case specifications.
• Worked with the Release Manager in coordinating biweekly production releases and developed and maintained release management plans and implementation plans.
• Developed the release management process and organized release and implementation team meetings.
• Assisted the Project Manager in creating Project Plan, Business Cases for various Lines of Business and helped end users in creating Formal Work Requests.
• Coordinated with the Project Manager and Tech Lead to create Communication Plans for both within and outside the team.
• Assisted with the creation of change management plans and developed matrices to track work performed and work in queue etc.
• Actively prioritized tasks, researched the LOE and assigned tasks to team members based on workload, subject area knowledge and expertise.
• Provided weekly status reports and risk assessments to Lockheed and EPA Stakeholders and outside End Users.
• Lead brainstorming sessions during the creation of application designs to ensure maximum usability.

Environment: Enterprise Architect, Rational Rose, Visio, Test Director, MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Axure, MS Project, SQL Server, Oracle, Documentum.

Confidential

Usability Engineer/ Sr. Technical Writer

• Held reviews with the FAA community for reviewing the existing use case specifications written for current FAA employees and identified functionalities that are in scope and out of scope based on project budgetary and manpower constraints and wrote use case specifications.
• Followed the Rational Unified Process (RUP) standards, procedures and processes.
• Facilitated JAD sessions for identifying new system requirements, new use cases and interface specifications.
• Wrote specifications for handling printing of licenses, reports and forms for the FAA licensing reports subsystems.
• Created business flow diagrams, Activity/State diagram and Sequence diagram using Rational Rose, so the developers and other stake holders can understand the business process according to their perspective with possible alternate scenarios.
• Conducted meetings with the development, testing and training teams to clarify use case flows and business rules to be sure the documentation addressed all known issues.
• Assisted the programmers and testers by answering questions and guided them in the development and testing effort.
• Assisted in the development of test plans and test cases and conducted functional, integration testing, batch testing and regression testing.

Environment: ReqPro, Rational Rose, Java Script, Oracle 9i, PL-SQL, MS Office, IBM Mainframe

Confidential

Usability Engineer/web Manager

• Conducted meetings with the development, and testing teams to clarify integration use cases, high-level business requirements and system level requirements.
• Co-ordinate with the PCMA and QA team and followed all PCMA and QA guidelines for requirements gathering, documenting and package creation.
• Co-ordinate with the Requirements Management team and followed all guidelines set forth in RMP.
• Developed and wrote the test plans and test cases and used Test Director to maintain and manage Test Cases.
• Assisted Data Analysts by running UAT for views from database.
• Held reviews with the business community for reviewing the existing use case specifications written for the customer and identified functionalities that are in scope and out of scope based on project budgetary and manpower constraints. Helped write use case specifications.
• Developed the release management process and organized release and implementation team meetings.
• Utilized Rational Unified Process (RUP) to configure and develop process, standards, and procedures.
• Gathered, Analyzed and Documented the requirements and used Enterprise Architect for managing requirements.
• Followed a structured approach to organize requirements into logical groupings of essential business process, business rules, and information needs, and ensured that critical requirements are not missed.
• Analyzed business requirements and segregated them into high level and low level Use Cases, activity diagrams and State Chart Diagrams using Rational Rose according to UML methodology thus defining the Data Process Models.
• Conducted Use Case Analysis, Workflow Analysis and Functional Decomposition Analysis
• Derived Business Requirements Document (BRD), Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS) based on User Requirement Specification (URS). Understood and articulated business requirements from user interviews and then converted requirements into technical specifications
• Met with client group, conducted interviews, gathered the requirements and addressed problems and formulated solutions.
• During the design phase, worked with the development team to ensure testability, reliability, usability, maintainability and performance of the application and created screen shots of the application in power point.
• During the testing phase worked with the Testing team to ensure that the testing team understood the requirements on which the tests are based and the reliability the system should have.
• Drafted test strategies, test plans, test cases and test scripts for the installation, GUI, functional, Security, Recovery, performance and integration testing for multiple software releases.
• Conducted sanity tests, functional tests and performance tests.
• Created Test strategies, and test plans and Test cases for manual and automated testing.
• Validated automated test cases by designing the various steps involved and performed automated testing using Robot's SQA basic scripting language.
• Acted as a liaison between business units and the technical units.

Environment: Java, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Enterprise Architect, Oracle, PL-SQL, Rational Unified Process(RUP), UML, ASP, Microsoft - Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

Confidential

Business Owner/Usability Engineer/Business Analyst/Sr. Interface Designer

• Responsible for defining the scope of the project, gathering business requirements, doing GAP analysis and documented them textually or within models.
• Utilized Rational Unified Process (RUP) to configure and develop process, standards, and procedures.
• Conducted JAD sessions with stakeholders to gather requirements.
• Analyzed the system specifications, business requirements for full understanding of the project.
• Interviewed area experts, asking detailed questions and carefully recorded the requirements in a format that can be reviewed and understood by both business people and technical people.
• Involved in converting the User requirements into business requirements document (BRD), functional requirements specifications (FRS) and technical requirements and also created business process models from the requirement specs. Managed Requirements using EA.
• Created Use Case specifications, business flow diagrams, Activity/State diagram and Sequence diagram using EA, so the developers and other stake holders can understand the business process according to their perspective with possible alternate scenarios.
• Prepared Logical Data Models that contains set of diagrams, and supporting documents containing the essential business elements, detailed definitions, and descriptions of relationships between the data elements to analyze and document business data requirements.
• Prepared Business Process Models that includes modeling of all the activities of the business from the conceptual to procedural level.
• Worked with the project team to design a software application that will support the business and meet the constraints of time, resources and budget. The design area scope was documented using Use Case diagrams.
• Verified the business scenarios on new builds for testing by QA team.
• Analyzed use cases and workflows and drew data flow diagrams
• Acted as a liaison between business units and the technical units
• Created Test Plans and Test Cases based on user requirements and functional specifications.
• Used different modes of execution during different phases of testing process to ensure that the application works effectively.
• Conducted performance testing and sanity testing.
• Part of the team involved with setting up the network and database servers.
• Helped the offsite and/or client testing teams port non-critical data from the production database to the test environment and contributed in the overall testing effort by identifying the key testing areas.
• Interviewing Subject Matter experts, asking detailed questions and carefully recording the requirements in a format that can be reviewed and understood by both business people and technical people.
• Set up definitions and process for test phases including product test, integration test, and system test. Work to fully implement test phase entry and exit quality criteria, standard test reporting metrics and standard test artifacts.
• Drafted test strategies and test plans and test cases for the installation, GUI, functional, Security, Recovery, performance and integration testing for multiple software releases.
• Held daily and weekly meeting with the development and testing team to relay any changed requirements.

Environment: TestManager, EA, Rational Rose, Unix, HTML, Java Script, Oracle, PL-SQL, MS Office, SPSSX, SAS, BMDP, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, LiveMotion, Dreamweaver Suite, FLASH, 3DMax, AutoCad

Confidential

Director of Interface Design and Usability Labs

• Requirements gathering, reviewing, and prioritizing project requirements in collaboration with business and technical teams
• Acting as team lead where I was responsible for coordinating all of the project components including thee delivery of client initiatives
• Defining user needs, preferences, and behaviors through qualitative and quantitative research/analysis
• Delivering creative and unique solutions that met or exceeded client need and specification
• Documenting usability goals, recommendations and standards/guidelines at appropriate intervals in the project lifecycle
• Designing and prototyping user interfaces (typically in HTML) for web-based and desktop applications
• Conceptualizing, designing, building and delivering prototypes for web site structure and user interface(s) with a team or alone
• Conceptualizing, designing, building and delivering sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes and documentation that clearly articulate site/application structure and organization
• Created over 400 websites in the course of my career
• Designed and created PSAs, direct mail, video, print brochures, online ads, animation
• Coded websites front and backend before COTs
• Created and maintained websites (COTS solutions and custom)
• Conducted remote and onsite usability testing at various points in the design process (and post-launch)
• Designing, setting up and running research labs at Confidential.
• Collaborating with creative teams and Web developers to build the front-end interface
• Providing close attention to detail in quality reviews to ensure proper integration of the UI with back-end functionality
• Conducting usability (heuristic) evaluations and presenting results as a finished report and/or in PPT presentations
• Supporting sales teams and representing usability capabilities to potential or current clients
• Collaborating with the rest of the user experience group to expand, evolve and update techniques, work products and deliverables to reflect latest trends and best practices.
• Analysis and reporting on usability issues on projects ranging from one-off screen designs to portfolio/suite/application flows and global behaviors.
• Planning and conducting various usability inspections/tests, including paper prototyping, heuristic evaluations, contextual inquiries, controlled lab studies, user needs analyses, and focus groups.
• Analysis and testing of research findings and providing actionable recommendations with an appropriate balance between usability ideals and business needs.
• Lead developer of Style Guides and heuristics checklists
• Researching and publishing usability standards. Tracking performance of goals throughout the development process.
• Teaching/Lecturing on User-Centered Design through training, lectures, course creation and delivery.
• Participating in the analysis of business and user needs in order to balance both in designing the best possible final workflows and interfaces, which increase user efficiency and promote the goals of the business.
• Participate in and leading brainstorming sessions during the creation of application designs to ensure maximum usability.

Environment: TestManager, EA, Rational Rose, Unix, HTML, Java Script, Oracle, PL-SQL, MS Office, SPSSX, SAS, BMDP, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, LiveMotion, Dreamweaver Suite, FLASH, 3DMax, AutoCad