Because overall perception of Intranet search was poor, users spent time trying to navigate through disorganized hierarchies, didn't look for information that could help them (resulting in rework), and frequently interrupted colleagues for pointers to content.

To help the Intranet development team improve the overall search experience, I conducted a study to discover and prioritize users' pains, and to learn more how users looked for information and wanted to leverage the search engine's capabilities. The study included representation from four countries and 20 different internal departments. I then helped the development team design a more robust, faceted search interface that would be phased in over several releases. As a result, overall search usage doubled, documents were more readily found within the top five results, and the development team received positive, unsolicited feedback from users.

Methods and deliverables: web usage analysis, surveys, interviews, usability testing, affinity diagramming, scenarios, sketching and interactive paper prototyping (Visio), design pin-ups, usability study report.

Several developers working on turning an academic idea into a start up company and widely marketable product were starting to put a graphical user interface on a command-line driven engine. These developers did not have the same insight into their potential customer base as the sales and marketing folks who were out in the field, so many them assumed that their users were just like them. (And these guys were MIT academics!) Naturally, this made important discussions about features and UI design decisions difficult.

I decided to create some personas to get everyone on the same page. Within a few months, the VP of Engineering would include the "persona wall" as part of every candidate / customer tour, and developers replaced the infamous "the user" language with "Ajay [one of our persona names] only cares about whether he can do [a goal]." I was so proud!

Methods and deliverables: surveys, interviews, theme identification, documented personas (in abbreviated and full forms), and presentations to developers / management.

Our company had recently adopted Microsoft SharePoint as a new platform for collaboration and department / team / project-related Intranet content. The Human Resources department (specifically an 8 person, cross functional team) was tasked with reducing and migrating their existing content to the new platform, as well as consolidating 14 different country-specific web pages into a single site for easier maintenance and targeted information distribution.

I was responsible for guiding this team through a user-centered design process, helping them to create a new information architecture, and educating them about SharePoint's capabilities and limitations. The CEO called the redesigned site "beautiful," the CFO was impressed with my ability to deliver a design that both the HR director and the CEO thought was well done, and subsequent departments (e.g. Finance) copied the design during their SharePoint migration. Recently after the launch, a user also stated, "I just set out to do my fitness reimbursement form this morning and, by force of habit, I was sort of dreading running around looking for what I needed....I think it literally took me 15 seconds to have the right form up on the screen. Kudos on a well thought-out design!"

Methods and deliverables: web usage analysis, surveys, interviews, design goals, braindrawing sessions, sketches / mockups (Visio), design pin-ups, card sorting, icon design, usability testing, and affinity diagramming.

Product managers for the company's main product reported that the primary users for our Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OA&M) documentation were dissatisfied with both how it was organized as well as how much conceptual detail was provided. Unlike our developer audience, system administrators needed task-based "cookbooks" that would enable them to respond to issues efficiently.

I provided the documentation group with a methodology for tackling this effort (within a tight timeframe and during a simultaneous rebranding effort, no less!), provided everyone with real user feedback to inform the redesign, and worked with writers on both coasts to successfully bring the reorganized documentation to our web site.

Methods and deliverables: persona reviews, stakeholder interviews, content analysis, web usage analysis, surveys, heuristic evaluation, scenarios, card sorting, redesigned classification system (mono-hierarchical structure with improved labeling and navigation mechanisms), governance documentation and presentations to writers / management. See also the associated research paper.

Feed simulations allowed developers to quickly test their applications by generating data sets of varying sizes from specified sources (e.g. random, configuration file, etc.) Although the company had a graphical Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on Eclipse, the initial release of this IDE only provided developers with access to a command-line interface for running feed simulations. Quickly after the first release, customers started requesting a real UI for creating, configuring, and running feed simulations (via direct requests to Product Management and through the feed simulation-related change requests they submitted).

I led a cross-functional project team (consisting of UI and runtime developers, QE, product management, etc.) to create this new graphical implementation of feed simulations.

Methods and deliverables: stakeholder interviews, change request review and triage, collaborative requirements gathering and prioritization, conceptual flow diagrams, affinity diagramming, interaction and visual design, mockups (Visio), design specification documentation.

With the hope of reducing expenses, our IT department shifted their focus from custom-built to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software for internal use starting in 2008. At the time, many different processes for comparing products existed, but few were readily reproducible form project to project. Additionally, none of the processes considered usability as an explicit factor when deciding whether to purchase procured software, and user rejection of a recent purchase due to usability issues meant that evaluation teams needed to look more closely at this piece of the puzzle.

I worked with IT to adapt our existing development process and user-centered design methodologies for this purpose, as well as to create and document a standardized, reproduceable process for evaluating COTS applications.

Methods and deliverables: usability-focused evaluation methodology consisting of questions to ask during the Request for Proposal (RFP) process, use case development, requirements gathering and prioritization, formalized demo process with scorecards and wrap-up discussions, heuristic evaluation / usability audit, end-user evaluation, and/or usability testing (when sandbox / proof-of-concepts are available). See also the "Presentations and Publications" section of my resume for more information.