Rob Adams
Objective
To research and design for human needs and desires.
To work with development to see these designs brought to life.
To craft products and systems that people fall in love with.
Education
Master of Human-Computer Interaction
Carnegie Mellon University, August 2004
B.S., Computer Science, Magna Cum Laude
Virginia Tech, May 2001
Minors in Professional Writing, Math, and Philosophy
Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society
Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society
Experience
Usability Specialist
Macromedia, Inc. , San Francisco, CA
September 2004–Present (Full-time)
Interface Designer / Team Lead
A Major Educational Technology Vendor, Pittsburgh, PA
January 2004–August 2004 (unpaid, through CMU)
Work with a multidisciplinary team to design a calculator for middle school algebra students and teachers. Participate in all research, design, and development activities.
Research Associate
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
August 2002–August 2004 (Full-time)
Research and develop software architecture design scenarios and patterns to support usability concerns. Prepare publications and tutorials on the topic of integrating user-centered design and software engineering. Assist with the application of our software architecture design patterns to a NASA software development project. Author a book chapter on our experiences applying our technique to this project.
Software Engineer
Orca Computer, Inc., Blacksburg, VA
August 2000–July 2003 (Part-time / Full-time / Consultant)
Researched, designed, and implemented a collaborative web-enabled software application for performing structured evaluations of complex systems. Assisted with the requirements definition and user interface design of the application. Designed a flexible 3-tier system architecture for the product to meet our key goals of robust concurrency, future extensibility, security, reliability, and vendor portability. Refactored the architecture to meet changing user needs. Set up and maintained an automated test system to ensure product reliability. Lead the implementation of the approximately 30,000 line system with one other developer.
Software Engineer
Virginia Tech Dept. of Computer Science, Blacksburg, VA
May 1999–September 2000 (Part-time)
Assisted with the design of an interactive, online distance learning site to assist students in learning key topics of introductory computer science. Created several instructional exercises using Macromedia Flash, JavaScript, and Java applets. Designed and constructed the site interface to be easily extendable by other instructors wishing to add content. Authored the help pages for the site and wrote an extensive maintenance documentation system and technical reference; proofread all of the materials.
Selected Publications
John, B. E., Bass, L. J., Sanchez-Segura, M-I. & Adams, R. J. (2004) Bringing usability concerns to the design of software architecture. Proceedings of The 9th IFIP Working Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction and the 11th International Workshop on Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems, (Hamburg, Germany, July 11-13, 2004).
Shklovski, I. A., Chung, Y. C., & Adams, R. J. (2004) Robotic Walker Interface: Designing for the Elderly. Proceedings of CHI 2004. (Vienna, Austria, April 2004).
Balci, O., Adams, R.J., Myers, D.S., and Nance, R.E. (2002) A Collaborative Evaluation Environment for Credibility Assessment of Modeling and Simulation Applications. Proceedings of the 2002 Winter Simulation Conference. (San Diego, CA, Dec. 8 - 11).
Balci, O., Gilley, W.S., Adams, R.J., Tunar, E., and Barnette, N.D. (2001) Animations to Assist Learning Some Key Computer Science Topics. ACM Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC), Vol 1, Issue 2.
References
Available upon request.
Skills
User-Centered Design
- Contextual Inquiry
- Contextual Design
- Personas
- Goal-Directed Design
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Cognitive Walkthrough
- GOMS
- Think-Aloud User Testing
- Experiment Design
- Log Analysis
- Paper Prototyping
Software Engineering
- Extreme Programming
- Automated Testing
- UML
- Design Patterns
- Model-View-Controller
- Usability-Supporting Architectural Patterns
Software Technologies
- Java
- Perl
- C++
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Flash ActionScript
- XML
- HTML / CSS
- J2EE
- Servlets / JSPs
- EJBs
- JDBC
- JFC / Swing
Software Packages
- Macromedia Flash
- Macromedia Dreamweaver
- Omnigraffle Professional
- Adobe InDesign
- IBM Websphere
- IBM Websphere Studio
- Apache Web Server
- Red Hat Linux
Coursework
Graduate
- Human-Computer Interaction Methods
- Software Architectures for User Interfaces
- Architectures for Software Systems
- Communication Design Fundamentals
- Visual Interface and Interaction Design
- Mapping and Diagramming
- Sketching and Modeling
- Designing Online Communities
Undergraduate
- Software Engineering
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Data and Algorithm Analysis
- Computer Graphics
- Public Speaking
- Creating User Documentation
- Technical Writing
- Design of Information
More Information
For detailed highlights of my interface design and development work, please see my portfolio. http://loki.lokislabs.org/portfolio/
I publish a professional weblog about the theory and practice of human-centered design and its role in organizations and society. http://roblog.org/
Willing to relocate.