Sarah Waterson
Oakland, CA
Objective
Improve people's experience with software applications by contributing my usability assessment and interaction design skills to a creative and energetic development team
Employment
Experience
PeopleSoft, Inc., Pleasanton, CA
July 2003 - present, Usability Engineer for Tools & Technology
| • | Design, administer, analyze and author reports for qualitative usability studies of web-based enterprise software applications and application components, including performance monitoring tools, end-user application configuration capabilities, search interfaces and control widgets |
| • | Engage in projects at various stages of development, assess and implement appropriate usability evaluation techniques |
| • | Resolve usability issues with interaction design, product management and development teams |
| • | Conduct interviews with users, author user profiles and personae, extend existing framework for identifying basic user types and design usability test recruiting screeners |
| • | Assist in the creation of highly interactive prototypes of future toolset functionality |
Bolt Peters User Experience, San Francisco, CA
February 2003 - present, Usability Engineer Contractor
| • | Conducted remote usability testing sessions and heuristic evaluations |
| • | Designed the information architecture and wire-frames prototypes for an insurance website |
| • | Developed remote usability testing logging and note-taking software |
University of California EECS Department, Berkeley, CA
January 2001 - May 2002, Graduate Student Researcher
| • | Expanded existing framework for remote capture of task-driven web usage to a variety of Internet-enabled devices |
| • | Developed system for aggregating, visualizing and analyzing gathered log data |
| • | Managed and advised undergraduate students |
Microsoft MSN Operations, Redmond, WA
June 1999 - September 1999, Program Manager Intern
| • | Designed and specified the requirements for an internal reporting and management tool |
| • | Wrote design specifications for developers and management, including prototypes, mock-ups and use case scenarios |
| • | Directed and managed initial phases of development |
Hewlett Packard Manufacturing Test Division, Loveland, CO
June 1998 - September 1998, Software Engineer Intern
| • | Investigated current software testing techniques, from coding practices to unit, interface and application-level testing, in order to improve existing development cycle progress and quality |
| • | Implemented tools and outlined practices to assist project development team in writing testable code |
| • | Provided online software testing resource to introduce new concepts and techniques to internal development groups |
Skills
| • | Usability and needs assessment: conducting user interviews and surveys; user profile, personae and use case development; designing and administering qualitative and quantitative usability studies, heuristic evaluations |
| • | User-centered iterative design, low to high fidelity prototyping techniques |
| • | Java, C/C++ programming experience; familiar with RDBMS and SQL, JavaScript, PHP, XML, XSLT, DHTML, and CSS; exposure to Python, JSP, WAP and WML; elementary conversational German |
| • | Familiar with Photoshop, Dreamweaver and HomeSite, MS Office suite; exposure to Quark, SPSS, Illustrator |
Education
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
May 2002, MS in Computer Science
| • | Human-computer interaction focus - see my project portfolio |
| • | Awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship |
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
June 2000, BS in Computer and Information Science
| • | National Merit Distinguished Scholarship Recipient, 1995-1999 |
| • | Lockheed Martin Corporation Foundation Scholarship, 1999-2000 |
| • | Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude |
The Goethe Institute, Munich, Germany
Summer 1997, Completed German language and culture program
Interests
| • | Social implications of technology and community volunteering opportunities |
| • | Sketching, painting and sculpting |
| • | Ultimate Frisbee, traveling, mountain and road cycling |
Publications
Masters Report
Waterson, S. WebQuilt: A Visual Analysis Tool for Understanding Web Usability Clickstream Data. MS Report, Computer Science Division, U.C. Berkeley. May 2002.
Conference Papers
& Presentations
Waterson, S., J.I. Hong, T. Sohn, J. Heer, T. Matthews, and J.A. Landay. What Did They Do? Understanding Clickstreams with the WebQuilt Visualization System. Proceedings of the ACM International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces. Trento, Italy. May 22-24, 2002.
Waterson, S., T. Matthews, and J.A. Landay. In the Lab and Out in the Wild: Remote Usability Testing for Mobile Devices. Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Minneapolis, MN. April 20-25, 2002.
Journal Articles
Hong, J.I., J. Heer, S. Waterson, and J.A. Landay. WebQuilt: A Proxy-based Approach to Web Usability Testing. ACM Transactions on Information Systems. July 2001. 19(3): pp. 263-285.
Workshop Papers
& Participation
Waterson, S. and J.A. Landay. WebQuilt: Understanding User Behavior from Clickstream Data. ACM CHI 2002: Workshop on Automatic Capture, Representation, and Analysis of User Behavior. Minneapolis, MN. April 20-25, 2002.
Graduate
Coursework
Spring 2002
Art 14
Paganelli
The Language of Sculpture
CS 294.4
Fall 2001
CS 294.2
CS 294
Spring 2001
Art 13
The Language of Painting
Fall 2000
CS 252
CS 294.4
CS 160
References
Available upon request
last updated 12/31/2004