Leon Barnard

leonbarnard@gmail.com

Summary

I am an experienced Interaction Designer with an advanced degree in Human-Computer Interaction. I have a proven history of creating elegant user interfaces and working well with development to get them implemented.

Employment

Interaction Designer at Pharmacy OneSource

Madison, WI — 2010 - present

Working closely with a cross-functional team to assess product requirements, create UI models, user task and interaction flows, screen designs, and user-interface interaction details that promote ease of use and optimize the user experience for various online products.
Partner with User Research team members to better understand the user and test the usability of features and conceptual designs.
Make logical decisions to ensure the overall success of the project by creating designs that seamlessly address customer and business concerns and objectives.

User Experience Designer at Ataccama Corporation

Prague, Czech Republic — 2008 - 2010

Introduced a user-centered design process to radically transform a developer-only tool into a novice-friendly product by creating easy-to-use new designs and making existing features more intuitive.
Designed wireframes, performed expert reviews and conducted usability studies as the sole user experience resource.
Wrote and performed video tutorials that were published on the company website.

Interaction Designer at Sun Microsystems

Monrovia, CA — 2004 - 2007; Prague, Czech Republic — 2007 - 2008

Performed UI design and usability studies as the user experience lead for several key Java development tools in NetBeans IDE.
Contributed to higher-level user experience reforms, such as creating a UI review process, defining a user experience vision and designing for accessibility.

Graduate Research Assistant at Georgia Tech HCI Lab

Atlanta, GA — 2002 - 2004

Conducted and directed research studies in Human-Computer Interaction, focusing on accessibility tools and mobile devices.
Published research findings in peer-reviewed HCI journals, such as Personal and Ubiquitous Computing and Behaviour & Information Technology.

Education

Master of Science, Industrial Engineering (Human-Computer Interaction concentration)

Georgia Institute of Technology — 2004

Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering (Human Factors concentration)

University of Wisconsin, Madison — 2000

Skills

User Interface design (prototypes, wireframes and mockups) - 7 years
Usability evaluation (usability testing, heuristic evaluation, expert review, etc.) - 9 years
Academic training in Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction - 4 years
Web development (HTML, CSS and Javascript) - 12 years

Selected References

"Leon is a gifted interface designer. Leon worked on several of the projects I managed where he demonstrated his ability to bridge business and product teams with engineering capabilities while infusing human factors best practices. Leon has an approachable demeanor which is critical to a role where constant feedback and iteration is required. He is open minded and willing to compromise to help move teams forward."

- Stefan Yap, Product Manager at Sun Microsystems

"He has a natural ability to analyze problems and solve them, while his experience has given him a very understandable and methodical approach to user experience. He could explain a complex workflow to your grandmother and she would understand it perfectly.

"His approach is always transparent and predictable. His ability to tackle problems outside of his current technical knowledge is amazing - more than a few times he acquired enough technical knowledge of a difficult domain to be considered expert, resulting in designs that were simple, elegant, and spot-on."

- Loren Mack, Senior UI Architect at Sun Microsystems

"Leon has a rare combination of skills - he is creative, meticulous, proactive and a great communicator. I was very impressed by Leon's work at Ataccama - I hired Leon as the first user experience person in the engineering team, and he was almost immediately able to blend in, create designs for both new functionality as well as redesign of existing, and more importantly, get a buy-in from the development team.

"He was also enthusiatic in helping with any other stuff - as the only english native speaker in the company, he was often asked to review english, record video tutorials, etc. and he was always eager to help, regardless of how boring that certain thing seemed. I hope we will cross paths again in the future, and I would, without any sign of doubt, recommend Leon to anyone."

- Ian Formanek, Development Manager at Ataccama Corporation