Name: Kei Wakabayashi
Education: B.S. in Informatics
Relationship: Happily Married
Hobby & Fun: Date w/Wife, Table Tennis, Drums, Books, Manga, Movies
Background: Informatics and User-Centered Design
"Huh?" That's what everyone says when I tell them I graduated with a bachelors degree in Informatics at University of Washington.
Back then, the cookie cut description of Informatics was the study of
people, information and technology. To me informatics is understanding
the needs of people, and developing technology that makes an impact on
how they work. It turns out that making a positive impact on how
people work using technology is much more difficult than building a
tool and writing the manual.
I experienced this first-hand in my
part-time job as a web development intern at a small consulting firm
and my first full time as a webmaster at Mithun, a Seattle
architectural firm. Whether the application was custom built or
purchased through a vendor, it seemed commonplace that using
applications and cursing out of frustration was a two-in-one activity.
Realizing
how frustrated users can be with technology, I wanted to help develop
technology that would people would instead be satisfied with. I
trotted back to UW while working and took a few more classes in human
computer interaction such as user interface design and usability
analysis. Both were phenomenal classes as I got to administrate
usability study for Amazon.com when they introduced sales of clothes.
Results
became more and more apparent. User-centered design, iterative design,
rapid prototyping, usability studies produced results. Although I was
the sole developer in small and then mid-sized companies, applying
these concepts brought 10's and 100's of more hits, and satisfied users
with each of the applications I developed. I tracked the difference in
traffic from the application previously developed to the new
application developed using user-centered design principles. Usage,
satisfaction, on time delivery all proved the power behind human
factors practices.
In 2005 I left Mithun. One of my proudest
projects is when I pulled existing data from an archaic visual fox pro
accounting database, stored it in SQL Server and developed a project
search tool for the company. They eventually purchased an ERP system
which included a project search application. However, the current
developer ended up taking the data from the ERP system and transferring
it back into the project search that I had originally developed by user
demand. The ERP application purchased was easily close to 6 digits.
But User-centered design won.
"Kei, you revolutionized our intranet." I still remember the moment someone had told me this when leaving the company.
Passion - User Interface Design
A
friend of mine pulled me out of Mithun and currently, I am now an
application developer for a large community college in the greater
Seattle area. History is repeating itself. There are dissatisfied
customers from applications that were developed without human factors
in mind. It pains me to see when applications are developed with
dissatisfied users and customers. User-centered design produces
successful applications from the initial release. I have seen too many
applications with development and monetary resources poured in, yet
resulting in dissatisfied users. Sometimes our greatest pains turn
into our passion. I hate seeing applications that go sour, requiring
in so much rebuild and band-aid solutions.
This is why my
passion is in user interface design. I want to help web entrepreneurs
produce successful applications from the get-go. I want to make a
difference in how people work.