Top-line Profile
I am excited to design product + service ecosystems enabling users to seamlessly interact with their devices, content, and each other, making new and everyday tasks delightfully simple—anywhere.
I bring an MS, Cognitive Science and 14 years of User Experience (UX) practice, between design and research, working with web and software products for a broad range of users. As a consummate team player in teams involving diverse stakeholders, I approach projects with a fun, collaborative spirit, sparking problem re-thinking, generating designs, “riffing” on ideas, and fostering consensus.
Specific areas of expertise include:
- Synthesizing user and domain research, requirements, constraints, etc. into “big pictures” and designs that fit and improve ecosystems of users’ activities, tasks, and tools
- Creating low to high fidelity prototypes (paper sketches, Balsamiq, HTML/CSS, InVision, Proto.io, Photoshop), wireframes, screen-flow diagrams, pattern libraries, UI documentation
- Communicating designs and user research to teams and stakeholders, collaborating and iterating in accordance with research, feedback, or scope and implementation challenges
- Mentoring teams in UX techniques, working with them throughout development lifecycle
Experience
Designed prototype features for apps and multi-device ecosystems. Tracking industry trends: web, wearables, mobile design, responsive design, networked devices. Blog: http://edwinli.com/ux-v1-archive.
Guided UX for cloud-based service with product manager and architect team from brainstorming to prototype and proposed vision for mobile interactions. Designed new patterns, extended existing product (HTML/CSS/JS + Salesforce’s Force.com), collaborating with product managers, architects, and developers in an Agile environment.
Designed, evaluated, and rebranded Web applications and sites, including:
- Order Status Tool: Redesigned tool to improve usability and created richly interactive UI patterns, setting and documenting new standards for Juniper web applications
- License Management System: Designed and scaled application from two product lines to 18
- Public, partner, and customer sites and applications: various roles for five site-wide redesigns
Evaluated designs using usability tests, surveys, and online discussion group. Provided results and design directions via debriefings, presentations, and full reports to multi-disciplinary product teams for Yellow Pages, Web application for businesses, and Search.
Approved usability of all functional designs for suite of three products (v4.5).
Initiated and conducted Kintana’s first usability study with premier clients Cisco, Applied Materials; reduced scrolling by 60% in flagship products’ main transaction screens. Designed suite-wide common components for both web-based and Java applet.
Championed GUI standards to 70-developer department including interaction designers, graphic designers, developers, and development managers over two development cycles.
Created look-and-feel and HTML/CSS standards; wrote style guide for RealCities (RC) network, including search engine, directory, weather, site administration tools, and authentication system.
Introduced new UX design methods, designing RC Marketplace (2000 EPpy finalist for Best Online Shopping Application) in a company-record design-to-release timeline.
Created UX development process and staffing plan with VP-Technology, Software Development.
Conducted heuristic evaluation of Web site and voice menu system. Designed usability lab.
Managed three-engineer team. Designed and conducted usability benchmark study of MS Office 2000’s core UI. Created new procedure, improving preparation time and reliability by 66%.
Education
Thesis (1997): ”The Organization of Action in a Socially Distributed Cognitive System”. Created and used a usability lab with videotape, transcription, and analysis.
- magna cum laude
- Phi Beta Kappa
Training classes: “Interaction Design Practicum” (Cooper), “Designing Usable Web Sites” and “Paper Prototyping” (User Interface Engineering), “Presenting Data and Information” (Edward Tufte).
- 2006 CSAT Award (Best Support Website): Juniper Networks
- 2000 EPpy Award Finalist (Best Online Shopping Application): RC Marketplace, Knight Ridder Digital
- Member: BayCHI, ACM SIGCHI, Phi Beta Kappa