Authors

Chris Farnum

Chris Farnum is a Senior Information Architect at Enlighten. His role is to define site structure and navigation based on user needs, strategic objectives, and well-organized content. He also specializes in creating taxonomies and defining the metadata needed for searching, browsing and content management. An essential part of his methodology is to incorporate user research into the design process. Chris has been an IA for over eight years. His experience prior to joining Enlighten includes working at ProQuest Information and Learning, where he was instrumental in redesigning the ProQuest search interface. He has also worked for a wide array of clients as a consultant with Argus Associates and Compuware. His preparation for being an IA includes working as a professional librarian and earning a Masters in Information and Library Studies from the University of Michigan.

Chris Poteet

Chris Poteet is a UX consultant with Portal Solutions. He has been specialized in UX consulting for over a decade. He can be found on Twitter (@chrispoteetpro) and his blog at www.siolon.com.

Christian Crumlish

Christian Crumlish is the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. He is a web strategist, information architect, interaction designer, and writer who has been developing and writing about web technology since 1994. He is on the board of directors of the Information Architecture Institute. He is the coauthor of Designing Social Interfaces, coeditor of Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web, and author of The Power of Many, The Internet for Busy People, A Guided Tour of the Internet and The Internet Dictionary. Christian earned his bachelor of arts in philosophy from Princeton University in 1986. He is the co-host of the Blog conference on the Well and can be found on Twitter @mediajunkie. Christian an avid fan of music, in particular jazz and other improvised forms. He lives in Oakland, California with his fiancée, Briggs, and his cat, Fraidy.

Christian Ricci

is a consultant, application developer, web designer, and project manager with over 11 years of experience in software design and development, network and server administration, and software project management and engineering. As a Senior Solutions Architect for Saillant Consulting Group, Chris has lead portal, content, and document management projects for Qualcomm, Intermountain Health Care, J.D. Edwards, EAS, and the Denver Post.

Site: http://www.chiamonkey.com/
Resume: http://www.chiamonkey.com/mealticket

Christina Wodtke

An established thought leader in Silicon Valley, Christina is a “curious human” with a serious resume. Her past work includes re-design and initial product offerings with LinkedIn, MySpace, Zynga, Yahoo! and others, as well as founding three startups, an online design magazine called Boxes and Arrows (that's us!), and co-founding the Information Architecture Institute. She is currently a Lecturer at Stanford in the HCI group in the Computer Science department. Christina teaches worldwide on the intersection of human innovation and high-performing teams. She uses the power of story to connect with audiences and readers through speaking and her Amazon category-bestselling books. Christina’s work is personable, insightful, knowledgeable, and engaging. Her books include Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Pencil Me In, and The Team that Managed Itself. Her bestselling book is a business fable called Radical Focus, which tackles the OKR movement through the powerful story of Hanna and Jack’s struggling tea startup. When the two receive an ultimatum from their only investor, they must learn how to employ OKRs and radical focus to get the right things done. To connect with Christina or to get more information on how to become a whole-mind, high performing team, visit http://cwodtke.com/ or http://www.eleganthack.com.

Christopher Detzi

Chris is User Experience Design Director at EightShapes, a Design Consulting firm based in Washington, DC. His professional interests lie in design strategy and research though he’s also an award winning Information Architect. Throughout his 12 year career, Chris has lead a large number of design programs as both a consultant to and employee of Fortune 500 companies and start-ups. In his spare time, he enjoys running, golfing, cooking, and spending time with his wife Jaime and their 3 young children - Alyssa, Brooke, and James. You can follow Chris's daily UX (and other) trials and tribulations on twitter at: twitter.com/detzi

Cindy Chastain

Cindy Chastain, user experience designer and screenwriter, has been exploring ways to engage an audience through storytelling, teaching, writing and design for over twelve years. Just recently she took on the role of Creative Director, Interaction Design at R/GA, a full-service digital agency in NYC. She's led projects for clients ranging from Verizon to GSK, BBC Worldwide, Showtime, Fuse, Madison Square Garden, Coca-Cola and Unilever. She holds an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University in New York and earned a BS in Radio, TV, Film from Northwestern University. In addition to moonlighting as a filmmaker and screenwriter, she is in the process of researching a book that explores how storytelling techniques can be used as a framework for design. She also coordinates UX Bookclub NYC.

Cliff Anderson

Cliff Anderson is a Senior Usability Engineer at Wachovia Corp., the USA’s fourth largest bank. With degrees from Duke and Carnegie Mellon, Cliff has been doing usability work for 20 years.

Clifton Evans

As well as being Editor in Chief here at Boxes and Arrows, Clifton is a User Experience Specialist and Researcher with almost 25 years of experience in our field, working as a research and design consultant for global companies, local governments, medium and small businesses in Europe and North America. Clifton was an early member of the User Experience, Information Architecture and Interaction Design communities in London, Vancouver, and Dublin, organising and presenting at many industry events, writing various articles and books, as well as researching topics from game design, data visualisation and gesture interactions to emotion tracking, AI and wearable devices. Clifton is currently researching toward a thesis on UX Cognition, and is often found consulting with clients on many diferent types of software design. Clifton's work can be found up on UXLab.pro

Dakota Reese Brown

Follow Dakota on Twitter: http://twitter.com/@dakotareese

Damian Cranney

I’m Founder and Managing Director at Big Motive, an experience design studio with offices in Belfast and Dublin. Throughout my career, I have advised a wide range of businesses, startups and local government teams – advocating design as a methodology that underpins service transformation and positive change for users, consumers and citizens.

Dan Brown

Dan Brown has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1994. Through his work, he has improved enterprise communications for Fortune 500 clients, including US Airways, Fannie Mae, First USA, British Telecom, Special Olympics, AOL, and the World Bank. Dan has taught classes at Duke, Georgetown, and American Universities and has written articles for the CHI Bulletin, Interactive Television Today (itvt.com) and Boxes and Arrows, an online magazine dedicated to information architecture. In March 2002, Dan participated in a panel discussion on the creation of information architecture deliverables at the annual IA Summit in Baltimore. He also presented a poster entitled, “Where the Wireframes Are: The Use and Abuse of Page Layouts in the Practice of Information Architecture.” Currently, Dan leads the Information Design and Content Management group within the office of e-Government for the Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency dedicated to protecting freedom of movement in the US.

Dan Saffer

is a senior interaction designer at Ameritrade. Over the last seven years of web work, he has worked with a diverse set of clients, from Lucent Technologies to the World Wrestling Federation. He is contractually obligated to say that he won a fellowship in 1998 from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council. He lives and works in New Jersey and is not writing a book about IA. His portfolio and blog can be found at www.odannyboy.com.

Dan Turner

Dan Turner (@ddt ) is currently a freelance-but-looking interaction designer and journalist. After a decade writing for publications ranging including Salon, the New York Times, I.D., Technology Review, MacWEEK, Nerve, Feed, and others, he took a left turn at the School of Information at UC Berkeley and dove into the world of user experience design.

He finds the fields dovetail in that they both aim to first serve the user. In addition to redesigning sites and apps for large and small companies, he remains active in the public good field, helping at hackathons, volunteering with Open Oakland, and mentoring at Code for America.

Collaboration, fact-checking, and learning are some of his favorite things, so please inquire within.

http://www.twoangstroms.com

Dan Willis

is a web consultant in Northern Virginia. He's spent the last eight years launching internet products for major media companies after almost a decade of developing, designing and editing newspapers and magazines. He has more personal websites than he really ought to, including: http://www.dswillis.com (a shameless pitch of his consulting services) and http://www.dswillis.com/draw (another shameless pitch, this one a showcase for his illustrations and cartoons).

Dana Chisnell

Dana is an independent usability consultant and user researcher who founded UsabilityWorks in San Francisco, CA. She has been doing user research in one form or another since 1982. Dana took part in her first usability test in 1983 while she was working as a research assistant at the Document Design Center. It was on a mainframe office system developed by IBM. Since then, she has worked with hundreds of study participants, for dozens of clients, to learn about design issues in software, hardware, web sites, online services, games, and ballots (and probably other things that are better forgotten about). She has helped companies like Yahoo!, Intuit, AARP, Wells Fargo, E*TRADE, Sun Microsystems, and RLG (now OCLC) perform usability tests and other user research to inform and improve the designs of their products and services. Dana’s colleagues consider her an expert in ballot design, design for older adults, and plain language. (She says she’s still learning.)

Daniel Lafreniere

Daniel Lafrenière is a consultant, author, public speaker and teacher in the field of user experience design.

His clients include Fortune 500 companies, the Government of Québec and the City of Québec where he does user research, UI design and evaluation.

Daniel published the books "Le design Web raisonné" in 2005 and "Créez des interfaces gagnantes" in 1995.

Since 1993, Daniel has been teaching UX design in universities, in Fortune 500 corporations and at conferences such as CHI and UPA.

Daniel lives on the web at www.daniellafreniere.com

Daria Plutecka

Dash Neimark

I design usable, enjoyable digital experiences driven by research and guided by the needs and desires of internal and external stakeholders. I draw upon my past experience in startups, UX consulting and freelancing, as well as the wealth of user experience knowledge I have gained throughout my M.S. in HCI (and now my M.S. in IDS) journey. From concept to launch, I incorporate lean, full-cycle UX tools & methodologies and am continually excited by future opportunities to play my part in delivering innovative digital solutions. Twitter - @ux_Dash

Dave Feldman

Dave Feldman is an entrepreneur and product designer based in San Francisco. Currently he’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Emu, and the author of Stky for iPhone. Previous gigs include Entrepreneur in Residence for CrunchFund, Sr. Director Special Projects at AOL/TechCrunch, and Director of UX for Yahoo! Messenger. A longtime resident of Cambridge, MA, Dave moved to San Francisco in 2007 and refuses to leave. He's a fan of great beer & great food. Dave blogs at Operation Project, tweets at @dfeldman, and is extremely active on whatever social network was announced a few hours before you read this.