Riander

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Executive, Management, & Project Team Coaching/Advising

Assistance in the form of on-the-job coaching and advising can be critical to attending to user experience in an appropriate way. Richard has provided this kind of assistance for numerous executives, managers, and project teams.

Recipients of this assistance have included:

• a team of VPs charged with developing an Internet strategy for their company
• a team charged with designing a means to remotely program personal digital video recorders
• a team of entreprenuers designing a business model for a digital rights and licensing management company
• a team of engineers responsible for the design and implementation of a high-end graphics computer workstation desktop
• a usability director for a consumer electronics company
• all of a company's functional analysts responsible for requirements development
• a team responsible for selling and providing services for redesigning a European firm's retail equity trading website
• and many, many more teams and individuals.

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User Experience Research Practice & Personnel Management

"User experience research," whether ethnographic or usability or..., is critical to a user experience practice, providing the data and inspiration needed for innovative, user-centered design. Richard has managed user research practice and personnel in multiple situations.

For example, at Studio Archetype, Clement Mok's ground-breaking, international brand identity and Internet business design consultancy acquired by Sapient, Richard started, directed, and grew the user research and experience strategy practice, hiring and developing a staff of cultural anthropologists, usability specialists, and experience strategists, successfully integrating their work with the work of brand strategists, information architects, graphic designers, content strategists, technologists, and others across the firm's many offices. (Richard also managed user experience research practice and personnel across multiple business units at Yahoo!)

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Experience Center Leadership

Creation of a "center" to focus on user experience role and practice development can provide needed support to user experience professionals dispersed in multiple locations or business units and can underscore the importance executives place on the role of user experience in a company.

At Viant, an international digital business consultancy, Richard started a corporate Experience Center into which employees from multiple offices rotated to work together to increase the role user experience played in designing business strategies and to develop methods and tools used to evangelize user experience and to address user experience on client projects. A network of user-centered design masters was developed to provide mentorship and direction on a project-by-project basis.

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Product Development Process Development

Designation of product development process activities, flow, roles, responsibilities, etc. can greatly impact the role that user experience, or any other contributor, can play in a business. Hence, Richard has addressed product development process development in multiple situations.

For example, at Yahoo!, Richard worked with executives, VPs, directors, and many more within numerous organizations (e.g., user experience and design, engineering, marketing, product management, editorial, legal, security, sales) to facilitate the design of an official product development process for new products. This official process spanned product ideation and conceptualization through business opportunity assessment, product planning, design, implementation, and launch. Richard also worked with personnel during the development of different products to facilitate change to how, when, and by whom certain work activities were done.

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User Experience Research, Modeling, Strategy, & Design

Multiple disciplines can and often should be applied during the work of user experience research, modeling, strategy, and design. Richard's work has involved applying several of these.

For example, Richard has conducted alot of ethnographic research, in homes and in workplaces, often leading or assisting others at the same time. He has conducted research in lab settings, and brought multiple stakeholders into the research and design process in important ways. He has led development of models from research findings to guide strategy development and design, and he has worked with many others in the development of strategy, requirements, and concept and interaction designs. He has...

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Workshop Development and Delivery

Direct instruction and support for exploring and developing solutions to challenges encountered in one's own situation come together in the form of workshops important to practitioners of all levels. Richard has contributed workshops to this mix that have benefited practitioners in dozens of companies.

For example, Richard developed and offered a 15-session User-Centered Design / Usability Engineering Workshop via University of California Extension for many years. This workshop led many into careers in user experience, and many of these practitioners are now user experience leaders. Richard has offered workshops in other settings as well, but returned recently to UC Extension to offer a new workshop on Managing User Experience Groups.

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User Experience Community Development

Professional communities are very important to the development and support of a profession and its members, and Richard has been greatly involved in leading the development of such communities locally and around the world.

For example, as SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair, Richard worked with people around the world to help them set up and successfully lead and manage regional and national HCI communities. Countries in which Richard helped establish and grow SIGCHI chapters included India, Russia, Romania, Brazil, Korea, Belgium, South Africa, Poland, Mexico, Finland, Czech Republic, Israel, Chile, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Richard helped establish BayCHI, served as BayCHI's first elected Chair and, for 12 years, its Program Chair, and in even other ways helped make BayCHI SIGCHI's largest and most successful chapter.

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User Experience Conference Development

Conferences facilitate community and profession development, providing important contributions to a literature to benefit many for years to come. Hence, Richard has contributed to conference development in different parts of the world.

For example, Richard was a Program Chair for the first DUX conference (DUX 2003), developing a novel program for user experience practitioners, comprised of panels of practitioners contrasting key elements of their real-world case studies, and opening and closing plenary sessions featuring Richard interviewing insightful design and business leaders. For the second DUX conference (DUX 2005), Richard moved into the role of Conference Co-Chair.

Michael Kronthal, Yahoo! Sr. Design Research Manager
"Special thanks to my former manager and mentor at Yahoo!, Richard Anderson, for his inspiration to redraw the boundaries between functional roles to spur innovative solutions."

Sara Little Turnbull, Stanford University Graduate School of Business
"Richard is the kind of 'glue' that most companies badly need."

Betsy Zeller, SGI Director of Software
"I brought Richard in to help the team develop skills in running customer visits, to help drive product design. We all learned a great deal... Richard is great to work with. He develops design skills in the team, and the approach was extremely successful."

Peter Merholz, Adaptive Path President
"Richard Anderson teaches a remarkable user-centered design course which alighted me on the path I am today."

Audrey Crane, Dubberly Design Office Design Manager
"Richard Anderson's contributions during [user research] were graceful, articulate, and enormously helpful."

Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Researcher
"the best managed workshop I've seen...; brilliant process in the workshop (Richard) organized"

Representative Anonymous Course Evaluation
"The sign of an excellent teacher, I feel, is the ability to make even the most stubborn among us (me) question our assumptions. Richard is just such a teacher, and I feel privileged to have taken his class."

ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service & Recognition of Service Awards
"Presented to Richard Anderson for his outstanding and valuable contributions to HCI communities throughout the world."

BayCHI Certificate of Appreciation to Richard for his:
"Special contribution and leadership to the BayCHI volunteers and members and to the San Francisco Bay Area human-computer interaction community."

Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group
"The world's best interviewer"

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