Professional Experience

Over the past 15+ years, I have led numerous teams and projects on future products and services, developing new user experiences and evaluating technical feasibility and user desirability. This work included user research for user understanding and insights, ideation and concept development, user scenarios, UX design, prototyping, user evaluation, and product strategy and roadmap. I have experience across a broad range of UX / product areas, including those for: TV, new display-based products, audio products, voice UX, wearable and mobile devices, cross-device UX (e.g., mobile, tablet, TV), consumer digital photography, collaborative and communication applications for mobile devices, social games for mobile (iOS), information visualization for data analysis, and multimedia software for the foreign language classroom.

July 2018 – present | San Jose, CA

On Sabbatical

Currently on sabbatical, taking a break from traditional work and working on personal projects. Open to consulting opportunities.

March 2011 – June 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area

Samsung Research America / Samsung Electronics America

Acting Lab Head, Experience Innovation Lab (01/2018 – 06/2018), SEA (re-org)
Acting Lab Head, Customer Experience Lab (02/2017 – 12/2017), SRA

Managed interdisciplinary team of 30+ people, including interaction designers, visual designers, PoC engineers, user researchers, producers. Our lab led UX commercialization efforts on Samsung Smart TV (core UX + new services such as Sports, Music, TV Plus, Universal Guide), art mode UX for Samsung’s The Frame lifestyle TV, UX for Family Hub 2.0 refrigerator.

Tangible UX Director, Customer Experience Lab (04/2015 – 02/2017)
Technical and UX Director, Smart Things Innovations Lab (04/2014 – 03/2015)
Sr UX Innovation Engineer / Project Manager, UX Innovations Lab (01/2013 – 03/2014)
Sr UX Innovation Engineer / Project Leader, UX Innovations Lab (03/2011 – 12/2012)

Led projects on next generation products and services for Samsung, incorporating:

  • competitive analysis
  • product strategy and business opportunity
  • concept development and user scenarios
  • formative and evaluative user research
  • design and development of proof of concept prototypes

These projects ranged from wearables to audio / voice-related products, to new lifestyle displays and lifestyle TVs to very large displays, new kinds of remote controls and cross-device services. Many of these projects were physical product concepts with both tangible and screen-based UX. I have collaborated closely with industrial designers, hardware / electrical / mechanical engineers as well as interaction designers, visual designers, user researchers, and secondary research analysts on these projects.

Managed both interdisciplinary and technical teams, including full-time employees, contractors, external partners and interns.

January 2002 – February 2011 | San Jose, CA

Eastman Kodak Company 

Employee from 06/2004; Consultant from 01/2002-06/2004

Researcher, Photographic Science & Technology Center, Kodak R&D (10/2004 – 2/2011)

  • conducted research in areas primarily related to digital photography
  • developed user scenarios, interaction workflows, working prototypes
  • led ideation sessions, conduct competitive assessment and develop patents
  • designed user studies

Project Leader, New Business Development, Kodak R&D (01/2002 – 10/2004)

  • participated in corporate-wide strategic initiatives (e.g., mobile imaging) and intellectual property assessment
  • conducted early stage new business development to reduce risk and make recommendations to upper management
  • sized market, built business case, developed financial model; evaluated potential consumer and business vertical markets
  • developed and tested user concepts for focus group testing
  • collected international data in lead markets, including data from market leaders and consumer focus groups
  • conducted user surveys and collected ethnographic data
  • led cross-site, geographically distributed team

09/1997 – 09/2001 | Naperville, IL

Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies

Member of the Technical Staff (Researcher), Software Production Research Department

  • Conducted research in several areas including:
    • next generation services for wireless handheld devices
    • information visualization
    • collaborative systems
    • user interfaces, including multimodal interfaces (e.g., speech-based interfaces)

Bell Labs Research Projects:

  • handiMessenger: awareness-enhanced universal communication for wireless handheld devices
  • InfoStill: an information visualization environment to support the end-to-end process of analyzing data using information visualization
  • LiveDocs: web-based information visualization documents that provide guided exploration of data for naive infoVis users
  • Natural Language Interface to InfoStill
  • Task Analysis of Users Analyzing Data Using Information Visualization

06/1990 – 09/1996 | Ann Arbor, MI

The University of Michigan

Technical, Design, and Educational Specialist

Project FLAME (Foreign Language Applications in the Multimedia Environment)

  • designed and developed interactive multimedia applications for foreign language and multi-cultural learning and instruction, including the award-winning Mexico Vivo Teacher’s Partner and Learner’s Partner applications
  • designed and built tools for end-user programming in ToolBook
  • maintained multimedia hardware and local PC network
  • evaluated and integrated new technologies

Granted Patents

14 patents granted:

1 9,858,504 Full-Text Method of selecting important digital images
2 9,579,577 Full-Text Electronic system with challenge mechanism and method of operation thereof
3 9,545,221 Full-Text Electronic system with dynamic localization mechanism and method of operation thereof
4 9,524,489 Full-Text Computing system with task transfer mechanism and method of operation thereof
5 9,179,243 Full-Text Device communication system with proximity synchronization mechanism and method of operation thereof
6 9,009,163 Full-Text Lazy evaluation of semantic indexing
7 8,774,528 Full-Text Method of selecting important digital images
8 8,386,920 Full-Text Method and apparatus for data visualization
9 8,315,463 Full-Text User interface for face recognition
10 8,219,513 Full-Text System and method for generating a context enhanced work of communication
11 8,122,356 Full-Text Method for image animation using image value rules
12 8,024,311 Full-Text Identifying media assets from contextual information
13 8,019,155 Full-Text Digital object information via category-based histograms
14 6,701,294 Full-Text User interface for translating natural language inquiries into database queries and data presentations