Jeff’s passion is for quietly making people’s lives easier.
Jeff’s path to user experience design started when he completed his MA degree in English in 2000 and he realized that he was pleasantly obsessed with the Internet. He completed a program in web content and information design, and his first professional experience was a wonderful project at the Ontario Science Centre, showing kids how they might look after aging 50 years. It was fun, novel, educational, “multi-channel” before the term existed—and he was hooked. He worked for a small not-for-profit for five years, focusing mostly on content, until his contribution to an award-winning e-learning project led to work designing experiences for learners. After two years as an Information Architect at Workopolis, Canada’s largest job site, he joined Usability Matters in 2011.
His ideal project involves figuring out the right questions to ask in order to find the right answers—something like solving a riddle. Jeff’s work has ranged from videos on kiosks to web-based training, but websites and applications are endlessly interesting to him.
Before his kids came along, Jeff spent an inordinate amount of personal time watching international films—retrospectives on obscure Taiwanese directors accounted for many hours of fun—but these days he spends his little spare time test-driving new apps and reading books the old-fashioned way.