About the Usability and User Experience Community
Member Profiles: 2008

Edited by Susan Duncan, Membership Coordinator

• Eileen Cannon
• Brian Snead

Brian Snead
briansnead@gmail.com
www.briansnead.com

Usability
I'm into usability because it's extremely interesting. And important. It's easy to eulogize the 'birth' of any technology / product and to completely ignore the fact that, useful as it may be in theory, users often only grudgingly figure out workarounds to bad designs, hardly using the technology / product as the designer intended. Usability is specifically concerned with facilitating between user and designer, heading off many potential problems. I appreciate that. And maybe I'm still just trying to make it up to Mom, who always shrugged and said "You didn't come with a manual."

Background / Education
I have just finished my M.A. degree in English (Rhetoric and Composition) at Georgia State University. Before that I earned undergraduate degrees in Music ('03, UGA), English ('06, GSU), and studied for a year at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Though most of my usability knowledge is from the classroom, I designed and conducted a usability study of a south Berlin culture magazine website, which I went on to redesign and am now its webmaster. Also, in my current part-time position as an editor in the university IS & T department, roughly half of my time is taken up with usability issues.

Personal
When my computer is off, I hang out with my wife, take our dog to the dog park, work on Bach's Sinfonias / Monk's 'Round Midnight / Beethoven's Op. 27 No. 2 (the Presto agitato), listen to podcasts, jog, swim, bike, write horribly overly-concerned existential rock songs, practice German, and teach my American buddies how to properly pour a Hefeweizen.

Eileen Cannon
Senior Technical Writer
Redwood Analytics/LexisNexis
eileendcannon@gmail.com

I'll be honest: when I joined STC two weeks ago, I didn't really know what Usability was when I selected it as one of my SIGs. It sounded interesting, so I chose it. After reading some of the articles and member profiles, I realize that Usability has been the banner I hold high when charging into the fray of software development - I just didn't know it. An avid end user advocate, my career experience in Usability includes persuading developers to include on-screen instructions and breadcrumb trails to help users have a clue about the interface, developing help and user guides that anticipate end user problems and questions, working with development to change unintuitive navigation, and even advocating a policy that nothing leaves our office in a font smaller than 9 points (unless it's a super- or subscript or very fine print). With the many resources this SIG offers, it seems that I chose well. I look forward to the information exchange.

My background: BA from Rutgers English/Writing/Linguistics. Started my career as a hard copy editor for the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), a standards writing organization. Freelanced for ASTM when my son was born, editing symposium papers of very technical content (my first symposium book, The Mathematical Modeling of Fire). Performed QA and DTP for a localization firm. I learned about engineering help projects by fixing poorly translated, broken help projects. Achieved true technical writer status when I moved to an educational software development firm, writing help, user guides, and working with xml, html, C++, etc. Currently employed for firm that develops Business Intelligence (BI) software for the legal industry. I am responsible for all end user documentation and help, and coordinate my content with our training content staff. My firm was recently bought by a very large firm who wants to grow our product. It makes sense to grow my skills and be ready for new projects and any changes.... hence, STC.

Personal: Although located in the mid-Atlantic megalopolis, I live in an old house in a small town that time forgot with a husband, 2 pretty much grown kids (both about to be seniors - college and high school), 3 cats, and a glorious garden. I am interested in the stars, the sea, stones, spirituality, and I bellydance for fun and fitness.