Below is my resume. You can also find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/katiecerar, where you can see who’s recommended me and why I might be a good fit on your team.

SUMMARY

• Passionate about understanding the place where the world of the user and the world of the product intersect.
• Energized about working at a company where insights gained from user experience research can make a real difference in the quality of the product and the happiness of the user.
• Resourceful and able to draw from a knowledge base of quantitative and qualitative design, research, and analysis methods, while still being prepared for and excited by the prospect of learning more.
• Experienced with usability studies, field studies, interviews, focus groups, surveys, ethnographic research, usability inspection, personas and more.

WORK EXPERIENCE

User Experience Designer (Part-time) – Enflick Inc. January 2011 – Present

• Direct user experience – responsible for all levels of user experience design activities in a <20 employee company
• Conduct usability studies – evaluate designs and inform iterative design decisions
• Assist in feature planning and roadmapping – provide a user’s perspective when planning future designs and features
• Liaise between developers and designers – Work with graphic design and development to create interfaces for mobile applications

User Experience Designer, Intern – Primal, Inc. May 2009 – Aug 2009

• Designed usability test plan – formulated test plan to regularly test designs and usability; compiled a suite of testing activities and evaluation methods
• Conducted usability studies – conducted over 40 usability studies to evaluate designs and interactions; reported results to the design team to direct design decisions
• Developed personas – created two personas for design and development teams; designed a persona visual template for future use
• Participated in entire design lifecycle – development of product concepts, storyboards, scenarios, wireframes, and functional specifications

Usability Specialist/Product Designer – Desire2Learn, Inc. May 2008 – Dec 2008

• Conducted usability studies – designed tasks to evaluate prototype interfaces, conducted user sessions, and assembled a set of design recommendations
• Assisted directly with design of new features – designed both functionality and user interfaces for new features in the Learning Object Repository product
• Defined functional specifications – developed functional specification documents to communicate user interface interactions, for use by development team
• Conducted market research – assembled competitive analysis charts to understand competitors and future development

PROJECTS

Collaborative Technology Design for Waterloo Region REACT Feb 2010 – present
Project to outfit Waterloo Regional REACT with large, interactive informational displays in their mobile command centre. Proposed thesis work: determine the impact

• Conducted requirements gathering – observed command centre to gather preliminary ethnographic data, conducted interviews with stakeholders
• Identified requirements – worked directly with REACT to determine technology and informational requirements for the communication and command centre station
• Defined measures – conducted literature review to design a series of passive quantitative and qualitative measures with which the impact can be measured
• Future work: design technology and UI interactions, design appropriate measures to determine the changes to teamwork and decision making

Design and Study of ASPECTS Application sept 2009 – present
Project to design and evaluate a collaborative digital tabletop application for use in naval command and control situations

• Conducted studies – designed study protocol, evaluation methods, and questionnaires to learn about teamwork while using the system; 17 study sessions with 41 participants
• Analyzed qualitative and quantitative data – explored data through affinity diagramming, coding, survey data graphing, log file analysis
• Represented project at conferences – exhibited project at I/ITSEC 2010 and CANSEC 2010 conferences to gather informal feedback from subject matter experts

EDUCATION

Candidate for Master’s of Applied Science, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo Sept 2009 – Present, Graduating August 2011

• Proposed thesis: Impact of Real-time Location Information of Field Operatives on Command Decision Making
• Completed grad-level coursework in Collaborative Systems Design, Advanced Analysis of Variance, Social Implications of Computing, Qualitative Methods

Bachelor of Applied Science, Honors Systems Design Engineering Co-Op, with Distinction, University of Waterloo Sept 2004 – April 2009

• Completed courses in User Centered Design Methods, Human Systems, Cognitive Ergonomics, Interface Design

OTHER EXPERIENCE

• Beta Program Coordinator – Research In Motion, Ltd.    Sept 2007 – Dec 2007
• Product Management Co-op – Sybase iAnywhere, Inc.   Jan 2007 – April 2007
• Technical Writer – Northern Digital, Inc.   May 2006 – Aug 2006
• Course Assistant – PDEng, University of Waterloo   Sept 2005 – Dec 2005
• Radio Software Coordinator – Research In Motion, Ltd.   Jan 2005 – April 2005
• Research Assistant – Manulife Securities, Ltd.   June 2004 – July 2004
• Shad Valley UBC 2003 Alumna

PUBLICATIONS

Scott, S.D., Allavena, A., Cerar, K., Franck, G., Hazen, M., Shuter, T., Colliver, C. (2010). Investigating Tabletop Interfaces to Support Collaborative Decision-Making in Maritime Operations. Proceedings of ICCRTS 2010: International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Santa Monica, CA, USA, June 22-24, 2010.

Kelly, A., Wallace, J., Cerar, K., Randall, N., McClelland, P., Seta, A.M., Scott, S.D. (2010). Solar Scramble: Design and Development of an Educational Children’s Game for Multi-Touch Collaborative Tables. Proceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, São Carlos-São Paulo, Brazil, September 27-29, 2010. PORTFOLIO See ca.linkedin.com/in/katiecerar for examples of past work and publications.