example achievements

Five examples of positively impacting software product development quality using different user research methodologies:

• Who are the users?: Identified the need for and managed the production of a consumer e-mail (web and client) use segmentation. Factor Analysis of over 2000 responses to a closed-question online survey produced 4 factors, segments.  Site visits to people selected to fit the segmentation enabled the production of rich textual descriptions of the personas goals, motivations and needs.  The results were summarised into the MSN8 and Hotmail product persona representations.  The segmentations were used to make design development direction decisions  and integrated in the construction of MSN8 communications testing plans.
• Getting it right early in the design process: Worked closely with an interaction designer to produce a high fidelity visual prototype of the shared browsing experience for MSN Explorer V2 using the Rapid Iteration Test and Evaluate (RITE) process.   Set-up the timescales and decision making criteria, designed an ran the user-input sessions.  The final working prototype became the specification document and was built reducing the cost of code-based user-feedback prototype testing and refinements.
• Intelligent spam filtering: MSN8 mail spam filter behaviour was consistent with user mail-filtering expectations because I developed an innovative,  economic data collection program to enable Microsoft Research (MSR) developers to seed the original spam filter program with emails actually received and sorted by real users.
• quick, cheap, early assessments: Using cognitive walkthroughs of Windows Vista synchronisation core planned experiences enabled early identification of experience bugs against the conflict resolution dialog specifications.
• what do users think?: target product users participated in an on-line open card sort of actual and potential online conferencing service abilities. The results were visually represented in a proximity matrix and similarity tree as parts of  posters and PowerPoint slide-decks that summarised  the research to the product team.   The results were used to evaluate the products current information architecture and the likely user-impact of changes to that IA.  The results guided decisions about features resource allocations and detailed design decisions throughout the subsequent development cycle.