The User-Centered Design (UCD) advisory board provides guidance on curriculum and instructional matters for the User-Centered Design Certificate.

Board Members

Sabina Alteras-Honig

Dr. Sabina Alteras-Honig possesses 17 years of industry experience and leadership in successfully applying human factors and usability principles to UI design, development, evaluation, task analysis and work process improvement, with particular expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methods. She received her PhD in Industrial/Organizational psychology, specializing in human factors, from the University of Connecticut. Her academic interest in human-computer interaction, cognitive processing and mental workload was complemented by 9 years of consulting for NYNEX Science & Technology and Bell-Atlantic, and 5 years as a senior requirements and data analyst within the Verizon IT organization.

Her work at NYNEX, Bell-Atlantic and Verizon included ethnographic research of telephone company technicians in their work environment, survey design and data collection, design and development of collaborative online communication tools for trainees, heuristic evaluation of proprietary software applications used by technicians and customer service reps, and exploratory data analysis and data mining. Sabina led a team of researchers to develop statistical predictive models of customer satisfaction and intent to switch services, which demonstrated an increase in accuracy of prediction of over 75% over the current algorithms in use previously.

As a senior usability engineer at Dell, Inc. Sabina led usability research for the consumer software organization. In this role she designed, executed, and managed heuristic analyses, competitive product evaluations, lab-based studies, contextual inquiries, focus groups and developed large-scale surveys. With an interest in innovation and thinking 'outside-the-box', she studied the current state of consumer software usage, satisfaction and preferences, leading to new, eye-catching and innovative UI desktop elements.

She is the principal and owner of Alteras Consulting, having consulted on a variety of usability initiatives which range from enterprise software applications, web-based training programs, transportation research, corporate, and health-care websites. Currently she is a User Experience Researcher at Microsoft, Inc. responsible for usability research on products targeted for IT system administrators. She is an instructor for the HCDE program, teaching Usability Testing.

Jenny Blackburn

An alum of the HCDE program, Jenny Blackburn has spent the past 10+ years working with industry-leading companies to create user-centered programs that are effective, efficient, and that map directly to business goals. Currently she leads the user research team for the Amazon retail website experience. Previous experience includes three years as an independent consultant, and 6 years as the director of usability at Getty Images.

Jenny is passionate about user-centered methods and the impact that they can have and loves sharing this passion with others. She is a part-time lecturer for HCDE 516, Usability Testing, and has taught as a consulting instructor for an international usability certification organization.

Suzanne Boyd

Suzanne Boyd is Founder & Principal Consultant of Anthro-Tech, Inc.—a user-centered design consultancy focused on government agencies, nonprofits and organizations with a social-impact mission. Anthro-Tech is one of the leading user experience firms in the Northwest. Much of their work focuses on websites, web applications, software systems and internet business strategy.

In addition to her considerable experience helping dozens of state and federal agencies with e-government strategy and initiatives she has also had the opportunity to work with a number of other exciting organizations to transform how they engage their audiences. From the largest private foundation in the world to a small group of developers working to create a cutting-edge application, Suzanne and her team get to collaborate with great clients on interesting projects.

Suzanne Boyd teaches at the University of Washington as an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Human Centered Design & Engineering Masters Program. Suzanne’s professional experience with large-scale UCD redesigns, web applications and customized training has made her a sought after authority on the subjects of user-centered design, usability and organizational change. Suzanne has a keen interest in connecting the academic world with industry practitioners in the UX community.

Jennifer Duncan

Jennifer Duncan is a founding member of the Boeing Information Technology (IT) usability group which began in 1993. She led the team that established user-centered design services and the usability lab within IT. Jennifer is a user experience specialist and also the resource manager for Usability Services. As resource manager, she engages with new customers, creating awareness of the benefits of UCD, defining support requirements and coordinating resources.

Jennifer leads the effort to incorporate user-centered design into Boeing IT's software development process and leads the Usability Service's Center of Excellence. The Usability CoE provides the infrastructure for improving usability maturity throughout Boeing. The CoE includes a library of best practices, a Usability Special Interest Group, web-based tutorials on user-centered design and other information that supports UCD methods. Jennifer is leading efforts to incorporate usability as a measure of software quality within IT including ensuring that usability is a criteria for software purchase and software supplier performance management.

Arnie Lund

Arnold (Arnie) Lund is Principal Director of User Experience and User Experience Community Lead for Microsoft's IT organization. He began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories in applied research. Arnie received his BA in chemistry from the University of Chicago, and his PhD in experimental psychology from Northwestern University. He is a member of the SIGCHI Academy, and he co-chaired the CHI conferences in Los Angeles ('98) and Florence, Italy ('08). Currently he serves as the Communities Chair for CHI 2011. He is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), and recently completed his term on the Executive Council of HFES where he was responsible for the first ANSI HCI standard. He has also served as president of the board of directors for the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics. He has more than 20 patents and patents pending, and has published widely in the areas of natural user interfaces and emerging technologies, and UX management. He is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Speech Technology, the advisory board for the Journal of Usability Studies and his book Leading User Experience: Essential Management Skills for UX Teams (Morgan Kaufmann) was published in Spring '11.

Doug Pyle

Doug Pyle has been a user experience professional for more than 11 years. He graduated from the UW in 1998 with an MS in Human Centered Design & Engineering, and in 1999 he started the user research group for microsoft.com, MSDN, TechNet, and Microsoft Press. In 2004 Doug moved to Greater China to manage UI Design & IA for Global Sources. Since then, he has worked for Google focusing on Ads and Search, as well as the Microsoft Robotics startup group, focusing on user experience planning. Doug is currently the Vice President of the Puget Sound chapter of the Usability Professionals Association and is a past president of the UW chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

Judy Ramey

Judy Ramey is professor and former chair of the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington and adjunct professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering and in the Information School at UW. Her primary research interests are in user research methods and the mobile user experience. In 2010 she received the Ken Rainey Award for Excellence in Research from the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and she was recently awarded the 2011 Ron Blicq Award for Distinction in Technical Communication Education. She is director of the UW Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation (LUTE), which received the ACM SIGDOC Diana award in 2007 for contributions to communication design. She has edited or co-edited two journal special issues on usability and has co-edited a book on field user-research methods (Wixon and Ramey, Field Methods Casebook for Software Design, 1996).

Jennifer Turns

Jennifer Turns has extensive experience researching varied issues in engineering education, with specific emphasis on the people at the heart of the engineering education system. She is an Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering and the J. Ray Bowen Professor of Innovation in Engineering Education. Much of her work has focused on student development as engineers—how to help students come to see themselves as engineers, appreciate their preparation for engineering, and integrate their educational experiences in service of future engineering activity. A particular thread of this work (supported through an NSF Career Award and a more recent follow-up NSF award) has involved extensive research on how these outcomes (identification, preparation, integration) are supported when students engage in construction of professional portfolios. Dr. Turns has also studied issues related to the teaching of engineering, with specific emphasis on how teachers think about their teaching activities (i.e., through studies of engineering educator decision making and engineering educator concerns). This work, which was part of the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, has significance for supporting practicing teachers as well as preparing future teachers. Dr. Turns has also studied engineering design thinking. Dr. Turns has a background in industrial and systems engineering and cognitive and learning sciences.

Skip Walter

Skip has over 40 years of experience in executive management, executive consulting, software engineering, product development, high technology mergers and acquisitions, organizational development, joint venture development, designing, architecting, producing, and delivering software solutions for the legal industry, publishing industry, health care industry, multi-national Fortune 500 companies, high technology startups and wineries. He was the Vice President of Engineering for Aldus (now Adobe) Corporation known for PageMaker software. He was the Father of ALL-IN-1, Digital Equipment Corporation’s $1 billion per year integrated enterprise office automation system. Skip was the founding CEO for Attenex achieving a cash flow positive state within three years. Attenex was sold to FTI Consulting in 2008 for $91M. Skip has raised more than $25 M in new venture funding for software companies in the office automation, medical, and legal industries. The products that Skip designed, created, and developed are used by over five million customers. Skip teaches Human Centered Design in the UW HCDE program. Today, Skip is on the Board of Advisors for Blink Interactive and Medify. Skip consults with medium sized wineries on direct to consumer and direct to trade marketing (including social media and social commerce).

Carolyn Wei

Carolyn Wei is a user experience researcher at Google in Seattle. She studies consumers and enterprise users in the lab and in the wild to make Google's chat and communication products usable, useful, delightful, and desirable. She received her Ph.D. in Human-Centered Design and Engineering (then known as Technical Communication) at the University of Washington in 2007, where she studied technology use in digitally emergent settings. For more information about her research, see http://research.google.com/pubs/author15363.html.

Dennis Wixon

Dennis Wixon is currently a senior UX lead in the BPD team. Over the past twelve years, Dennis has managed research for MSN, Microsoft Home Products, Microsoft Game Studios and Microsoft Surface. Dennis previously worked as a usability manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, where a number of important usability methods such as Usability Engineering and Contextual Inquiry were developed. His primary interest is innovative research methods for more usable, useful, and exciting designs that lead to commercial success. In addition, Dennis has been an active member of the human factors community for many years. Notably, in 1982 he was one of the five founding members of the Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM SIGCHI and was General Co-Chair of the SIGCHI 2002 conference. He has served as Vice Chair for Conferences for ACM SIGGCHI and has been a member of the SIGCHI executive committee. Dennis has authored over 50 articles, book chapters and talks on HCI and co-edited the book Field Methods Case Book for Software Design with Professor Judy Ramey of the University of Washington. He and Dr. Daniel Widgor are completing new book, Brave NUI World, on touch and Gestural Interfaces.

Wixon holds a PhD in social psychology from Clark University and has published in numerous psychological journals including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Wixon is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, at the University of Washington.

Mark Zachry

Mark Zachry is an Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. He has taught in the field since 1994. Prior to that, he had worked for seven years as a communication specialist in Arizona, primarily in the aerospace industry (Honeywell), but also in an early computer-based training company that developed technical training courses for such clients as Motorola. He continues to periodically engage with industry as a consultant, working with such clients as BP and Microsoft. He was also involved in the successful launch of a web technology start-up company in the early 2000s. He was the founding director of a usability research and evaluation lab at a university prior to coming to University of Washington, and has since been the interim director of UW's Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation. As a researcher, his primary areas of inquiry have been communicative practices in the workplace, usability, and the design of technologies to support collaborative work online. Professor Zachry served for five years as editor-in-chief of Technical Communication Quarterly. He has developed and taught more than a dozen different courses, but his areas of specialization are usability testing, user-centered design, and theoretical foundations of the field.