Résumé of Elizabeth Buie

Elizabeth has 33 years of experience in information systems, focusing on human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience in Web sites, Web applications, desktop applications, and complex systems. She also has several years in system engineering, defining and analyzing system requirements and integrating the HCI process into the system life cycle. Elizabeth has master's degrees in mathematics and human development and is proficient in Italian. She served on the editorial board of ACM's <interactions> magazine for six years, and serves on the editorial board of the UPA's online Journal of Usability Studies.

• Qualifications Summary
• Professional Experience
• Education and Affiliations
• Important Past Projects
• Publications

Qualifications Summary

• Strong commitment to the user experience, with three decades in the discipline
• Experience with usability engineering on a wide variety of products and systems, from Web sites and Web applications to printed materials to training workshops to desktop applications to complex command-and-control systems
• Deep and broad skills in diverse user experience techniques:
  • Client research — stakeholder interviews, design/facilitation of workshops
  • User research — focus groups, interviews, card sorting, information prioritization
  • Requirements specification — elicitation, definition, analysis, allocation
  • Information architecture — category/hierarchy development, naming, conceptual modeling, task analysis, site maps/indexes, layout, navigation design
  • Interaction design — concept generation, cognitive models, personas/profiles/scenarios, task matrices and flow diagrams, construction of mock-ups and prototypes
  • Interface design — selection of fonts/colors/widgets; selection/tailoring/application of guidelines
  • Experimental research — experiment design/conduct; quantitative/qualitative data analysis
  • Usability inspection — heuristic evaluation, guidelines-based review
  • Usability testing — test design, test administration, data analysis, recommendations
  • Section 508 assessment — inspection, exercise with JAWS
• Keen eye for visual design, honed by photographic training and experience
• Outstanding written communication skills: editor of a column in <interactions> for six years, with two articles published there; published in The Washington Post and in System Development; member of the editorial boards of <interactions> and Journal of Usability Studies
• Familiarity with standards, guidelines, best practices, and the human factors principles behind them: member since 1992 of the HFES 200 Standards Committee and contributor to the ANSI/HFES-200 standard, "Human Factors Engineering of Software User Interfaces"
• Strong proficiency in Italian, both spoken and written

View Elizabeth's profile on LinkedIn.

Professional Experience

Luminanze Consulting, LLC

2007 -
present

www.userworks.com

UserWorks, Inc.

2005 –
2007

www.csc.com

Computer Sciences Corporation

1977 -
2005

www.aesthetic-images.com

Æsthetic Images

1996 -
present

Early professional work

1974 -
1977

Education and Affiliations

Education

• Bachelor of Science with honors, Mathematics, North Carolina State University (www.ncsu.edu)
• Master of Science, Mathematics, North Carolina State University (www.ncsu.edu)
• Master of Arts, Human Development, University of Maryland (www.umd.edu)
• Certificate in professional photography, Washington School of Photography (www.wsp-photo.com)

Professional Affiliations

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  • ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
• Usability Professionals Association, DC chapter
• National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)

Important Past Projects

• Usability assessment and user needs elicitation for the forthcoming e-Knowledge tool of the American Institute of Architects (2007)
• Usability assessment of the American Library Association's Web site (2006)
• Study of readability of health-related articles by low-literate people, for the National Library of Medicine (2006)
• Various Web application design projects for LPL Financial Systems and for ControlCase (2005-07)
• Various UI standards developing activities
• Usability testing of the Student Aid Report for the US Department of Education (2005-06)
• Human factors engineering and user experience redesign of the En-Route Information Display System (ERIDS) for the Federal Aviation Administration (2003-05)
• Graphic design of icons for the En-Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) project for the Federal Aviation Administration (2003-05)
• Usability analysis and redesign of the web site of the Ombudsman for the US Department of Education's Office of Federal Student Aid (2001)
• Web usability/accessibility engineering and user experience redesign for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (2000-01) (note: The NRC site no longer looks anything like our redesign, and IMO it has gone to Hades)
• Process/application reengineering and user interface design for the American Industrial Hygiene Association (2000-01)
• HCI strategy and engineering for the Business Operations Support System of ICO, a wholesale mobile phone services provider (1999)
• System engineering support to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for the Flight Operations Segment of the Earth Observing System (1993-99)
• Web usability engineering for CenterNet, the intranet of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (1998)
• HCI/usability engineering support to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for spacecraft telemetry simulators
• HCI and human factors engineering support to AERITALIA (now part of Alenia Spazio) for the design of the Crew Workstation hardware and software of the Columbus (European) Attached Pressurized Module (APM) of the International Space Station and for the APM Centre (1987-90)

Publications

• Editorial board, <interactions>; editorial board, Journal of Usability Studies.
• Editor of "The Whiteboard," a column in <interactions> for designers who are not specialists in HCI or usability, Jan/Feb 2000 – Jan/Feb 2006.
• Allen, B. G., & Buie, E. (2002). What's in a word? The semantics of usability. <interactions>, 9, 2, 17-21.
• Buie, E. (1999). HCI standards: A mixed blessing. <interactions>, 6, 2, pp. 36-42. (For the unbowdlerized version — with wisecracks about Microsoft left in — see the original article elsewhere in this webspace.)
• Buie, E. A. (1990). Jungian psychological type and subjective satisfaction with using a computer for educational statistics. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Maryland.
• Buie, E., & Vallone, A. (1995). Human-system interaction development: An integral part of the systems engineering process. In Proceedings of the Fifth Annual International Symposium of the National Council on Systems Engineering, St. Louis, Missouri, July 22-26, 1995.
• Buie, E., & Vallone, A. (1997). Integrating HCI engineering with software engineering: A call to a larger vision. In Smith, M. J., Salvendy, G., & Koubek, R. J. (Eds.), Design of Computing Systems: Social and Ergonomic Considerations (Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction), Volume 2. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1997, pp. 525-530. (Available on this web site.)
• Winkler, I., & Buie, E. (1995). CHI'95 Workshop report: HCI challenges in government contracting. SIGCHI Bulletin, 27, 4, pp. 35-37.
• Hefley, W., Lynch, E., Buie, E., Muller, M., Hoecker, D., Carter, J., & Roth, J. T. (1994). "Integrating Human Factors with Software Engineering Practices". In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 38th Annual Meeting, 1994, pp. 315-319. Republished in G. Perlman, G. K. Green, & M. S. Wogalter (Eds.) Human Factors Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction: Selections from Proceedings of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meetings, 1983-1994. Santa Monica, CA: HFES, 1995, pp. 359-363.
• Buie, E. A. (1988, January). Personality and system development: What's the connection? System Development, pp. 1-4.
• Buie, E. A. (1988). Psychological type and job satisfaction in scientific computer professionals. Journal of Psychological Type, 15, pp. 50-53.
• Buie, E., Gaia, E., Pensavalle, E., & Vallone, A. (1988). Use of HCI design guidelines in workstation development. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Space Software Engineering: Columbus and Space Infrastructures. Torino, Italy: AERITALIA Space Systems Group.
• Buie, E., Pensavalle, E., Vallone, A., & Sarlo, L. (1988). The role of usability testing in the design and development of interactive software. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Space Software Engineering: Columbus and Space Infrastructures. Torino, Italy: AERITALIA Space Systems Group.
• Buie, E., & Vallone, A. (1988). Structured approach to human-computer interface design. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Space Software Engineering: Columbus and Space Infrastructures. Torino, Italy: AERITALIA Space Systems Group.
• Buie, E. A. (1985). Jungian psychological type and programmer team building. In T. Chow (Ed.), Proceedings of COMPSAC85. Chicago, IL: IEEE Computer Society
• Buie, E. A. (1986). Software quality and Jungian psychological type. In J. North (Ed.), Proceedings of COMPSAC86. Chicago, IL: IEEE Computer Society
• Vallone, A., Buie, E., & Sarlo, L. (1988). Human-computer interface structure and system operations architecture. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Space Software Engineering: Columbus and Space Infrastructures. Torino, Italy: AERITALIA Space Systems Group.