Employee Profiles
Tec-Ed Leadership
Stephanie Rosenbaum
Stephanie is founder and president of Tec-Ed, Inc. A charter member of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), she regularly delivers presentations and workshops at UPA, ACM SIGCHI, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, as well as for companies and universities. She is one of the 2005 recipients of the University of Washington’s “Mikey” award, and currently co-chairs the Usability Community for the CHI 2006 Conference.
Stephanie’s many publications include a chapter on “Making User Research Usable” in Software Design and Usability (Copenhagen Business School, 2000). With Chauncey Wilson, she contributed a chapter on “Categories of ROI and their Practical Implications” to the second edition of Cost-Justifying Usability (Bias & Mayhew, 2005).
A Fellow and Exemplar of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), Stephanie headed the STC’s Research Grants Committee for five years. Stephanie is a past vice-chair of ACM SIGDOC (Design of Communication). She also served on the Administrative Council of the IEEE Professional Communication Society, which awarded her an IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000.
Stephanie holds a B.A. from The University of Michigan and an M.A. in the philosophy of language from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research background includes anthropology studies at Columbia University and experimental psychology research for the University of California at Berkeley.
Scott Watkins
Scott Watkins, chief operating officer, has over 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and general management of technology-based companies. Previously, Scott was founder and chief executive officer of Access Systems LLC, a value-added reseller of document management, workflow, and web content management software solutions to Fortune 1000 manufacturing companies, utilities, and government. He has also held senior positions at Software Products, Inc., a developer of fourth-generation languages for IBM computers, and at Planning Research Corporation, a $400 million provider of advanced IT solutions, engineering, and business services. Scott earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BBA from the University of Miami. He has a strong engineering background, with three years of undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan.
Laurie Kantner
As Tec-Ed’s Vice President of Client Services, Laurie Kantner is responsible for successful delivery of all research studies, designs, and content comprising project work for clients. Laurie has over 30 years in the field of improving the user experience with technology, with 15 years as a usability specialist and 30 years in technical communication. Laurie manages Tec-Ed’s user experience staff members across the country.
Laurie is a member of the Usability Professionals’ Association and ACM SIGCHI, and a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication. She is co-author of the chapter “Estimating a User-Centered Design Effort” in User-Centered Design Stories: Real-World UCD Case Studies.
Barbra C. Wells
Barbra is Tec-Ed’s Vice President of Market Development. Since joining Tec-Ed in 2004, she has established ongoing relationships with 15 new usability and user-centered design clients throughout the country. Barbra is conversant in three languages and an expert in communication for business, academic, technical, and popular audiences. For more than 20 years, she has contributed to business development at both the strategic and operational levels in the fields of manufacturing, automotive, federal government agencies, colleges and universities, and consulting companies. Her experience covers marketing; promotional materials; public relations; business plans and product development; and technical illustration and documentation.
User Experience Team
Lori Anschuetz
Lori has over 25 years of experience as a usability specialist, information architect, and project manager in corporate and consulting environments, including over 15 years at Tec-Ed. Lori’s usability evaluation experience includes numerous laboratory tests, as well as heuristic evaluation, user interviews (both in person and on the phone), focus groups, contextual inquiry, and ethnographic interviews. She has worked with users throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Among the products and services Lori has evaluated are enterprise-wide project management and administration tools; insurance claims processing and customer information systems; telecommunications applications; financial services, including web-based stock, mutual fund, and foreign exchange trading for financial institutions and consumers; alternative home page designs for a major Internet news service; and online information services for audiences ranging from elementary school pupils to customer support personnel to engineers. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Currenex, Deloitte & Touche, eBay, 415 Productions/Library of Congress, IEEE, MSNBC, Yahoo!, and many smaller firms.
Garett Dworman
Garett joined Tec-Ed in 2003 as senior consultant specializing in knowledge management analysis and design. He has over 10 years of experience in product and user interface design for firms ranging from established financial institutions to high-tech startups.
As an independent consultant, Garett recently worked on e-business traffic flow analysis of the website of a major healthcare insurer, followed by integration of an online sales tool into the site; an information profiler for knowledge personalization and classification; a corporate monitor for assessing intangible assets and intellectual capital; and a vocabulary translation system for a peer-to-peer, heterogeneous EAI system.
Garett has also been a senior architect at Cytaq and co-founder of Practical Reasoning, which developed pattern-oriented information access tools and the MOTC data mining visualization tool. Before going to graduate school, he did artificial intelligence programming at Bolt Beranek and Newman and decision support consulting at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Garett has published extensively on how people and organizations disseminate, access, and consume information. He is active in ACM SIGCHI and holds a Ph.D. in decision sciences from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His undergraduate degree is in cognitive science studies from Tufts University.
Jennifer Lee Carlson
Jennifer Lee Carlson is a senior consultant with Tec-Ed. She has over 15 years of experience in usability evaluation and human-computer interaction, including contextual inquiry, user and task analysis, user interface design and development, and post-deployment evaluation.
Jennifer has conducted usability evaluations throughout the United States, Asia, the United Kingdom, and Germany. She holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University and a Bachelor’s in Computers and Communication from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications in China.
Larry Rusinsky
Larry is senior interaction designer and information architect for Tec-Ed. He has over 20 years of experience in information organization and retrieval, including 10 years previously with Tec-Ed. Prior to rejoining Tec-Ed in early 2004, Larry was senior information architect with Argus Associates, Inc., where he designed Web-based information architectures for clients that included Daimler Chrysler, Motorola, Morningstar, and 3Com. Larry also has worked for a bibliographic software developer, where he was user interface designer and product manager for information retrieval products. Larry earned his M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Michigan School of Information. He is a member of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) and the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA).
Brian Phelps
Brian Phelps joined Tec-Ed in 2007 as senior consultant. He has over 7 years of experience in user-centered design techniques, including usability testing, heuristic evaluation, user interface design and development, field usability studies, and contextual inquiry.
Prior to joining Tec-Ed, Brian was a usability practitioner and user interface designer at Pfizer Inc. During his tenure at Pfizer, Brian worked with more than 20 different internal project teams all over the globe and has interviewed hundreds of scientists in his work. In recent years, Brian has had success evangelizing usability at Pfizer, and he successfully introduced rapid prototyping to IT project teams. Brian holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.
Support Team
Beth Almay
Beth first joined Tec-Ed in 1980 and after a 13-year absence, returned in 1998. She brings a wide variety of experience and knowledge to Tec-Ed, with a background in retail, customer relations, and general management. Beth co-owned and operated her own retail business, has a wide variety of experience in general office work, employed by both large and small corporations. As Support Team Supervisor, Beth ensures that Tec-Ed's work is of the highest quality by maintaining project schedules, overseeing project recruiting, and performing copyedit on all project materials.
Melissa Barnes
Melissa is support to Tec-Ed’s business development team. She brings to Tec-Ed over 10 years of experience in the fields of accounting, customer service, and administrative support. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Italian from the University of Michigan.
Suzanne Cabana
Suzanne Cabana is Tec-Ed’s Accounting Manager. She has over 10 years experience as an accountant and auditor. Previously, she worked for Dupont, Waste Management, and the Society of Automotive Engineers. Suzanne has a Bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University and an MBA from Eastern Michigan University.
Paul Hooper
Paul joined Tec-Ed in 1997. He has worked in desktop, server, and network support for over a decade and is certified as a Cisco CCNP and CCDP, as a Microsoft MCSE, and holds Sun Solaris and Novell CNE certifications. Paul completed two Bachelor’s degree programs at the University of Michigan in Computer Science and Economics. In addition to contracting for several Fortune 500 companies and numerous small and midsize businesses, he has worked as an instructor in the Computer Science programs at two Michigan colleges. He now uses his experience to assist Tec-Ed and its clients with the unique technical aspects of usability studies.
Jacie Wedberg
Jacie came to Tec-Ed in 1983 as the company’s Production Specialist, contributing her extensive knowledge of documentation style, format, and graphics. During her more than 20 years with the company, she demonstrates her commitment to excellence by a continual advancement of her knowledge base with extended education in software and graphics programs, html, and online help. She is co-webmaster of Tec-Ed’s website and is the lab coordinator for the software and hardware Tec-Ed uses for their usability sessions.
Erin Weiner
As Recruiting Coordinator, Erin ensures that qualified participants are identified, screened, and scheduled appropriately for all Tec-Ed projects. She also adds to the support team using her knowledge of Word and Excel. Erin has a Bachelor's degree in Human Resources from Michigan State and worked in the Human Resources field before joining Tec-Ed in 2008.
Tec-Ed Associates
Dana Chisnell
Dana has been associated with Tec-Ed since 1999. She brings more than 20 years of experience in usability, user interface design, and technical communications and development. Dana is credited with initiating an unconventional session format at the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) conference in 2002 called an “idea market” (originated by Ulf Andersson for FORUM). Idea Markets are now an official part of the UPA program. She has presented at the Society for Technical Communication international and CHI international. Dana holds a BA in English from Michigan State University with an emphasis on linguistics.
Janice James
Janice James has been associated with Tec-Ed since 2005. She has been in the field of usability engineering since 1988 providing clients usability research, evaluation, training, information architecture, and interaction design services. Her clients include companies such as McGraw-Hill, Charles Schwab, Cisco, KBKids, CNet, AOL/Netscape, Hewlett Packard, Unisys, Intuit, Cabelas.com, and BestBuy.com.
Janice developed usability programs at three major corporations: Netscape Communications, AMRs SABRE Travel Information Network, and Electronics Forms Systems. In 1990, she recognized the need for a practical-oriented organization dedicated to enhancing the skills and professional success of usability professionals and became the principle founder of the Usability Professionals Association. After serving as UPA’s President for five years, she continued playing an active role in the association’s growth by serving on the Board of Directors through 1999. Janice also co-founded the Society for Technical Communications PIC (Professional Interest Committee) on Usability and the Kentuckiana Chapter of STC. Janice was also a contributing author of Usability in Practice.
Caroline Jarrett
Caroline has been associated with Tec-Ed since early 2005. After 13 years as a project manager of computer systems integration projects, she now focuses on “what systems are for” instead of “how systems are put together.” Caroline is an expert in evaluation and design of paper and web forms, and effective implementation of business process that includes forms. She is writing a book about designing forms with Gerry Gaffney of Information and Design in Melbourne.
A citizen of the United Kingdom and founder of Effortmark Limited, Caroline has also tutored for the Open University in Project Management and in User Interface Design and Development. She is co-author of “User Interface Design and Evaluation” (Morgan Kaufmann, 2005).
Ethan Newby
Ethan has been associated with Tec-Ed since 1999. He specializes in statistical analysis and has been working as an independent consultant in usability for eight years. He performs usability evaluations, including lab and field testing, surveys, user profiles, server log analysis, and heuristic evaluations. Ethan earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mary Jane Northrop
Mary Jane has been associated with Tec-Ed since 1982. She brings more than 20 years of experience in usability, user interface design, information architecture, Web metrics and analytics, interactive marketing, and technical communications and development. Her clients include companies such as Google, eBay, VeriSign, Cisco, Xerox, Compuware, Hewlett Packard, Comerica, Hunter Douglas, Godiva, Best Cellars, TableTopics, and SuperCoolTunes.
Mary Jane taught at the University of Michigan for 8 years in the School of Engineering and the School of Information and developed a graduate-level course in Document Design as well as contributed to the development of the Freshman Introduction to Engineering course and the senior-level Technical Communication/Software Engineering combo course. All of the UM classes introduced students to usability concepts by requiring formal testing of design concepts. Mary Jane also developed a 2-day usability course for the UM School of Information's Professional Engagement Program. Mary Jane holds a BS in Computer Science from Eastern Michigan University and an MS in Technical Information Design and Management from the University of Michigan.
Ron Sova
Ron has worked with Tec-Ed since 2004. With 11 years of experience in usability engineering, he specializes in information design, information visualization, and interaction design. Ron also has extensive experience in the areas of contextual inquiry, usability testing, prototype testing and evaluation. He has developed and taught classes in GUI Design, Application Design, and Graphic Design Tools & Methods.
Ron’s experience has been as an employee, contractor, and most recently as a consultant (four years). He has worked in the usability departments at Compuware and American Express and has worked as a usability consultant for Compuware Software Products, American Family Insurance, Yahoo!, Juniper, and Johnson Controls.
Ron earned a BSEE from Marquette University and has studied Computer Science at UWM. He is currently finishing a degree in Communication Design at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.