A quick update: We've sold our house in Charlotte, moved to Raleigh, and have a new house - the house of 10,000 projects. I'm now Director of User Experience at Lulu.com, a web-based distributor of digital content (books, photography, art prints, audio, video, even software).

You can contact me at .

 
 
So if you are looking at a stack of UI resumes (and in this monster.com-ized hiring environment you probably are) why should you want to hire me, or someone like me?

Software is hard, and expensive. Building great software is harder, and especially more expensive. But building the wrong software, or bad software, is even more costly. Hiring a UI leader for your software development organization will make your requirements larger, may make your development time slower, and probably will push your initial costs higher.

There, I've said it.

But...

How much time can you save every day with better design? How much is that worth to your company or your customers?

How much will you save with software that is easier to understand and support? Or, how much support cost could you save with a product that installs reliably and plays nicely with other applications? A product that can be upgraded more easily because you've already considered how other tasks can be integrated into the whole?

And what if you didn't have to release upgrades every six months?

Because it really isn't just good UI design that someone like me, can bring to your company - it's good product design. That means product features that make sense, and that are built to work together. It means mockups and testing *before* specifications are completed, so that users and programmers and managers all can see what is coming and can agree on the requirements through a shared vision. It means requirements based on user goals (instead of checklists) that capture *all* the functions of the software, so that when inevitable compromises have to be made the product still makes sense to your users. It means consistency across the product in language, in tone, in process. It means testing the product with real users and categorizing enhancements so that the software will please users more with each new release, instead of causing fear and uncertainty. And, ultimately, it creates customer loyalty because your products make your users more productive, more reliable, and even smarter.

In a world of commodity software, outsourcing and offshoring, design is a crucial differentiator that pays a return on investment by making sense of the software development process.

Thanks, pRC
 
 

(Disclaimer: These pages are also for exploration. A chance to try some different effects, color schemes, and technologies. These pages can contain DHTML, CSS, Javascripts, etc. So please forgive me if some things look a little strange or go boink, they'll probably keep changing over time.)