User Interaction Design Overview

In 1984, I was hired by Bell-Northern Research (the R&D arm of Bell Canada and Nortel Networks) as probably one of the first "visual interaction" designers in Canada. My first project was working on the Meridian M3000 Touchphone user interface featuring an LED touchscreen. My second project was concurrently working on the Meridian DV-1 Voice Data user interface and Meridian launch collateral. The DV-1 failed in the marketplace because, at the time, customers couldn't understand why anyone would want to combine voice applications with data applications. Both products were 10-15 years ahead of their time. Since then, I have worked on many multi-disiplinary teams developing a wide range of user experiences and data visualizations. Over the years, I have been asked to do one or more of the following activities:

• Design management and leadership
• Concept exploration and development
• Stakeholder and end-user interviews
• Information architecture
• User experience/interaction design
• Instructional design
• End-user task and taskflow analysis
• Use case, story, and story map development
• Wireframe design
• Visual interaction design
• Data visualization
• Low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping
• Web-based, client-side programming (JS, CSS, and HTML)
• Stakeholder and end-user verification (Usability testing)