Ann is an expert in user interface evaluation and information design. She has been reviewing and testing user interfaces for over 20 years.
Throughout her career Ann has been a passionate champion for user-centered design. Her most recent work has involved leading the development and implementation of a repeatable user-centered design process for a user experience department in a large financial services organization. The initiative is based on setting clearly articulated, measurable usability goals, and evaluating design projects in relation to those goals.
Ann calls on a variety of qualitative research techniques for understanding the experience users will have with products and services. From field research in the home or workplace, to focus groups, to lab-based studies of prototypes, she uses her strong facilitation skills to build empathy with research participants to elicit key insights into the user experience.
Ann began her career at Hewlett-Packard as a Learning Products Developer. In this role, she wrote award-wining documentation for personal computer products. As part of that work, she was one of the earliest practitioners of usability testing on documentation.
Next followed a period in which Ann contracted as a freelance usability expert and technical communicator for many west-coast technology companies. Among her projects from this period were an online help system for an interactive television product, field research and lab-based usability studies on personal computers, mobile devices, and network products, as well as user’s guides for telephony, network, and personal computer systems. Ann’s clients included Apple, Oracle, Silicon Graphics, Microsoft, and many Silicon Valley start-ups.
Several years later, Ann joined Metavante Corporation (now known as FIS), a software provider for the financial industry. She managed the in-house usability lab and conducted both lab-based and field research studies at user sites across the country. Ann worked with design teams to incorporate user-centered design best practices into their process.
Ann has a Master of Arts degree in Professional Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Allegheny College, Meadville, PA.
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