Barbara E. Ballard

Online Presence


Experience


2001 – present

Little Springs Design, Lawrence, KS


Help clients reach their customers with an enhanced user experience, increasing product usage and sales. Clients include device manufacturers, startup mobile application companies, industry associations, and carriers.

1999-2001
Sprint PCS, Overland Park, KS


Improve usability of mobile devices including the TouchPoint 3000. Educate designers and developers in creating usable sites. Design Sprint-branded Wireless Web sites. Create publicly available style guides for HDML and WML phones. Provide user experience expertise for location based services, 3G wireless data, synchronization, and other technologies.

1998

Co-op: IBM Design and Information Development: Server Team, Raleigh, NC

Design and prototype user interfaces; work with development, information development, and graphics design to ensure the best possible user interaction; perform low-fidelity testing and early prototype testing; interview customers and users to determine usage needs and patterns.

1997-8

Co-op: IBM Speech Business Unit, West Palm Beach, FL

Develop future user interfaces, develop formal specifications for software component UIs, work with programmers to implement solutions to usability shortcomings, incorporate results of usability testing into current UI, use rapid prototyping software environments to demonstrate UI designs, and review designs to ensure efficient user interaction. Perform task analyses, design and perform Wizard-of-Oz testing, interview users to elicit goals, and organize and run focus groups. Develop, run, and analyze usability tests, produce test designs and result reports, and review test plans and results, write beta customer and end-user surveys to elicit end user data.

1994

Monterey Technologies, Inc., Cary, NC

Use data logging software and video capture equipment to gather and analyze usability test data.

Education


2003-5

University of Kansas

Masters of Business Administration Strategy, entrepreneurism, and marketing.

1993-8

North Carolina State University

4 years graduate work, Industrial Engineering
Study human factors, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and industrial design.

1992

University of California at Berkeley

B.S., Industrial Engineering and Operations Research