Tec-Ed’s History

Tec-Ed was founded by Stephanie Rosenbaum in 1967, beginning as a computer documentation services firm. Tec-Ed was one of the first firms to serve the unmet need of providing understandable, task-based documentation to business users of computer technology. Computers were mainframes in Tec-Ed’s early days; we saw the evolution to minicomputers, personal computers, and then to Web-based applications.

As minicomputers and PCs came into use, it became increasingly clear that even the best manuals couldn’t improve systems that were difficult to use. To help computer users, we needed to improve the interfaces themselves—and so we changed our focus to human factors and HCI (human-computer interaction).

Tec-Ed employees became trained in HCI and usability evaluation. We became charter members of the Usability Professionals’ Association at its inception. Not surprisingly, many important techniques—such as task analysis and information architecture—are common to both the human factors and documentation disciplines. Today Tec-Ed’s practice is about 90% human factors (design and evaluation) and 10% content development.

Tec-Ed is now a 15-person User Experience firm with offices across the country. We serve the usability research, interaction design, usability evaluation, and communication needs of clients that range from software companies to eCommerce and members of the health and biotech industry.