Diverse 'T-shaped' staff skills essential for UX company

Friday, 14 January 2011, 11:24 am
Article: sticK

Diverse 'T-shaped' staff skills essential for user experience design company

(sticK - 14 Dec. 2011 ) Optimal Usability, a user-experience design consultancy, likes to think its reversing the brain drain.

The Wellington and Auckland based company has 21 staff with a real United Nations feel to their origins, and a hugely mixed bag of talents 'under the hood'.

Chief executive Trent Mankelow trained in human/computer interactions, dealing with the psychology of that relationship, while former founding partner Sam Ng had an industrial design background.

OU finds out what customers of its clients find frustrating or confusing when using their services, with 70% of its work being internet/computer related.
"We then suggest changes which improve user satisfaction and increase usage," Mankelow says.

It staff are diverse in their professional backgrounds, among them being cartographers, sociologists, psychologists, industrial designers, graphic designers and operation research experts. One has a PhD in e-learning. They come from Germany, England, the United States and Canada, "with Peter Jackson having provided one of the biggest advertorials you could think of," he says.

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For sticK – science, technology, innovation & commercialisation KNOWLEDGE - is a new Wellington based news service concentrating on following the money from ideas to income. Contact editor Peter Kerr at peter.kerr055 @ gmail.com

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