Al Youngblood :: User Experience Researcher
Work History
User Research International, User Experience Researcher, Redmond, WA (November 2011 - present):- Usability testing, focus groups, benchmarking.
Microsoft Corporation, User Experience Researcher, Redmond, WA (August 2010 - July 2011):
- Focus on developer guidance: Visual Studio help system, MSDN Library and DevCenters for developers using Visual Studio and related Microsoft technologies to build applications.
Microsoft Corporation, Bing, Business Analyst, Bellevue, WA (January 2010 - June 2010):
- Created daily, weekly, and monthly scorecards from data mining of customer verbatim feedback (45,000 entries per month)
- Created and modified SQL queries to refine data sets according to requirements
- Identify and document issues in products through statistical analysis of customer incident data
- Finalized reports as PPTs on Sharepoint for feature teams and leads
Incaa Designs, Intern, Bainbridge Island, WA (April 2008 - December 2009):
- Focus on educational science e-learning and interaction design
- Designed user surveys and semi-structured interview instruments
- Conducted pilot study, coding, and analysis
- Performed logistical and comparative analysis of alternate implementations
- Developed proof-of-concept analysis for prototyping and spec requirements
Education
Master of Science (Information Management), University of Washington, Seattle, WA (June 2009)Bachelor of Arts (Sociology/Computer Science), Texas State University, San Marcos, TX (August 2004)
Skills
User Experience:- Ideation: Card Sorting, affinity diagrams, persona/scenarios, storyboarding
- Information Gathering: Contextual inquiry, semi-structured interview, surveying
- Prototyping: wireframes, flow diagrams, proof-of-concept
- Evaluation: Heuristic evaluation, focus groups, thinking aloud, cognitive walkthroughs, field methods
Research:
- Quantitative: A/B testing, Experimental design
- Qualitative: Validity testing, interview schedules, color-coding
- Web: Social network analysis, ethnographies, pilot studies, grounded theory
- Other: SEO, sitemap analysis, and rank analytics, and search information behavior
Related Skills
- Systems: Windows 7, Linux
- Languages: Javascript, XHTML/CSS, XML
- Applications: OVO 6, Morae 3.1,UES 5, Axure Pro 5, Office 2010, Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 (Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Acrobat, Photoshop)
School Projects (2003-2009)
Interface Design for Education, Mobile Multimobile Interface for Native American Students (Spring 2008 - Fall 2009):- Designed user surveys and semi-structured interview instruments
- Conducted pilot study, coding, and analysis
- Interviewed teachers and students using designed instruments
- Performed logistical and comparative analysis of alternate implementations
- Developed proof-of-concept analysis for prototyping and spec requirements
- Increased accessibility to keyboard functions for disabled users
- Designed prototype and tested deliverable on volunteer sample
- Reported usability findings and made end-user recommendations
- Ran through complete product development cycle
- Conducted field contextual inquiries
- Evaluated design and re-iterated to create final working prototype
- Received top panel marks from Nokia, Microsoft, and Intel researcher
- Masters Thesis Capstone project
- Created functional specifications for development
- Created mock-up and prototype in HTML
- Extensive web development and scripting, and set-up Apache-SQL-PHP
- Comparison between search results using NDCG, MRR, and Precision
Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Women in Computer Science
Quantitative Study of Education Attainment by Women in Small Towns from 1978-1998:
- Conducted semi-structured interviews and survey
- Used SPSS to perform ANOVA testing on hypothesis
- Combined findings into coding analysis and summary report
- Researched and wrote original literature review and analysis