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KRISTA VAN LAAN |
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Hands-on User Experience director with knowledge of all aspects of User Experience. Have experience in interaction design, visual design, usability, user research, and content development. Always seeking ways in which user experience can make a measurable difference to sales and profits.
Able to strategize at the high level and also very good at managing details. Many years designing, developing, and implementing user experience strategy. Ability to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines.
Successful at building, managing, and motivating teams. Created the User Experience and Technical Publications departments at three high-tech companies. Strong track record of high performance in fast-paced environments.
Significant contributions toward a broad range of consumer and enterprise products. Successful product design for Web, desktop software, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.
Knowledge of state-of-the-art UX tools. Planned and managed usability lab with Tobii eye-tracking, skilled at building online usability tests with UserZoom.
Itron February 2010 - Present
Itron provides smart networks, software, services, meters, and sensors to help utilities better manage energy and water. Silver Spring Networks was acquired by Itron in 2018.
Senior Manager, Documentation and Localization 2018-Present
Responsible for documentation for a wide range of hardware, software, and firmware products and solutions. Manage localization and translation.
Director of User Experience & Product Documentation (Silver Spring Networks) 2010-2017
Built the User Experience and Technical Publications department, providing quantitative and qualitative user research and technical documentation in a very fast-paced startup environment.
Provide design and usability input and research for consumer and enterprise-level Web-based products. Develop designs and processes to ensure branding consistency, design, and ease of use across product and service families and back-office operations.
Seagate Technology April 2008 - February 2010
Director of User Experience, Seagate Branded Solutions
Seagate Branded Solutions makes consumer storage-based products including media players, portable hard drives, and home networking devices.
Hired to build and lead User Experience team and create the vision for user experience design within Seagate's consumer business. Worked with product management, engineering, customer support, and marketing to improve existing products and create new product designs. Had sign-off responsibility at key phases of development to ensure User Experience goals were met.
Responsible for visual design, interface design, out-of-the-box experience research, usability research, content, and localization. Owned the end-to-end user experience for all consumer products.
Managed the interface design for rich media products. Created flows, prototypes, graphics, and specs and oversaw implementation from inception to release. Led the research and design effort for two generations of Seagate's media player, which was very favorably reviewed.
Responsible for user research that resulted in major shifts in not only what features were added to key products, but also how products such as storage devices, media players, and home networking devices were marketed.
Developed common standards to drive consistent experience across all Seagate consumer products. This included iconography and other graphic components, LED behavior, messaging, and reusable software components.
Reduced localization costs for consumer products by more than 30% in FY2009.
VeriSign, Inc. 1999 - 2008
Director of User Experience
2007 - 2008
Director of Human Factors Engineering, VeriSign Security Services 2002-2006
Senior Manager, Technical Communications 1999-2001
VeriSign sold consumer and enterprise-level identity and authentication and domain-name services. The enterprise security business was acquired by Symantec in 2010.
Started at VeriSign when there were only 400 employees and built the User Experience department from the ground up. Nine years later the company had grown to 4000, and the User Experience group was a globally distributed centralized team of more than 30 designers, Web developers, usability engineers, technical writers, and other content providers, reporting into product development.
Owned the user experience for enterprise and consumer Web and mobile applications and services. Produced an enormous amount of work without missing any deadlines. Provided research reports and designs, requirements, UI specifications, personas, test plans, pre- and post-test questionnaires.
Successfully incorporated user experience design into an Agile development environment.
Outfitted and managed the centralized usability lab and provided usability tests for all the business units. In 2007 brought in Tobii eye-tracker and incorporated eye-tracking research and reports into all user testing.
Created clickable prototypes for conferences and sales demos. These demos helped to win a number of important accounts.
Designed and maintained e-commerce flows for SSL certificates purchased on verisign.com. Employed user-centered design methodology to improve purchase flow and develop new Web applications which improved customer satisfaction, resolved many customer support issues, and enabled cross-selling and upselling to existing customers.
Devised numerous ways for User Experience to contribute toward increased sales and profitability. One notable success was proposing and managing a large nationwide usability test that successfully proved the value of Extended Validation for digital certificates.
Nokia Telecommunications, Helsinki, Finland 1996-1999
Customer Documentation Group Manager: Network Management Systems R&D Department.
Managed globally distributed team to produce print and online documentation for Network Management Systems software, which helped operators plan, implement, integrate, and manage their networks. The documentation set contained more than 70 manuals, written and maintained for up to three concurrent releases.
Member of three cross-functional workgroups that oversaw processes and guidelines.
Unda (a Scitex subsidiary), Helsinki, Finland 1993 -1996
Documentation Manager: Responsible for product and training documentation, localization, and Web documentation for Scitex Savanna, a prepress image-retouching and page layout software system that ran on a Sun workstation.
Roy F. Weston, Inc., REAC Contract for the U.S. EPA/ERT, Edison, NJ 1991-1993
Tech Media Managing Editor: Managed staff of video producers, editors, and writers to provide multimedia services to the U.S. EPA Environmental Response Team.
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Bachelor of Fine Arts
University of Kentucky. Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation
Human Factors International: Certified Usability Analyst (CUA)
Managing User Experience Groups, Essentials of Interaction Design, Practical Usability Testing, Science and Art of Effective Web and Application Design, User-Centered Analysis and Conceptual Design, Rapid Prototyping, Advanced CSS, JavaScript, ROI of User Experience, Usability and Product Development, Ajax Design and Usability, How to Build Rich Personas