UsabilityNJ
The New Jersey UPA Chapter
2008 UsabilityNJ Election
Please read this page and cast your vote for your chapter officers.
Instructions
Candidate Slate:
The slate of candidates for chapter officers for 2008 is identified below.
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You may vote for or against the slate of candidates.
E-mail your vote to: vote@usabilitynj.org - If the slate is approved the candidates on the slate will become the chapter officers for 2008/2009.
Eligibility:
- You must be a UPA member in order to run for a chapter officer position.
- All do not need to be a member of the UPA to vote. All UsabilityNJ members are welcome and encouraged to vote.
Candidate Slate
Below are bios of the candidates.
Ronnie Battista – Candidate for President
Ronnie has been working as an advocate for the voice of customers for over 14 years. Prior to joining MISI as Director of UX Client Strategy, Ronnie was Managing Director of the US office of Gextech, a Spanish gaming company, where he led global user experience research efforts for the organization. He was also Vice President of Online Customer Experience for D&B, where he led the UI development of D&B's next-generation online product D&B interactive (DNBi) interface. Prior to D&B, Ronnie worked at Accenture, where he built and led the User Experience Labs at Accenture's Innovation Center in Murray Hill, NJ. Ronnie has provided UX leadership and management to over 90 global clients, working across all major industries, communication channels and development phases for such diverse clients as AT&T, Verizon, AOL, Novartis, DTCC, Toyota, AstraZeneca, BOE gases, Hoovers, AIG, British Airways, KPMG, Best Buy, Allstate, Comcast, NYC.gov and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ronnie received an MA with Distinction in Public Administration and Public Policy from University of York (UK) and a BA with Honors in Political Science and Philosophy from Rutgers University. Ronnie was recently Chairperson speaker and Program committee lead for NJ's World Usability Day event 'Innovation in Healthcare' in November 2007.
A lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore, Ronnie lives in Tinton Falls with his wife and 3 children.
Marilyn Tremaine
Candidate for Vice President and Program Committee Chair
Marilyn is a Research Professor at the Center for Advanced Information Processing (CAIP) Research Institute at Rutgers University where she directs projects researching multimodal interfaces and assistive and rehabilitative technology. She recently retired from the New Jersey Institute of Technology where she chaired the Information Systems Department and directed the undergraduate program in Human-Computer Interaction. Prior to moving to New Jersey, Dr. Tremaine was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto where she carried out research on designing tactile and audio feedback input devices and collaborative systems design. Before moving to Toronto, she was an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Michigan Business School.
Marilyn has been active in the UsabilityNJ community, in particular, helping to organize the World Usability Day events. She has also been a speaker at the monthly meetings and helped to secure other speakers for meetings from time to time. In the past, she has been active in the ACM SIGCHI community serving as SIGCHI President from 1998 - 2002. She chaired the CHI'86 Conference on Human Factors in Computing, the CSCW'92 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, the ASSETS'2000 Conference on Assistive Technology and the CUU'2004 Conference on Universal Usability. She has also been technical program chair of Graphics Interface'93 and Group 2004. She serves on five journal editorial boards and is on four-to five conference program committees annually. In 2005, she was awarded a Lifetime Service award by ACM SIGCHI.
Marilyn's non-work passion is cooking and she has studied at the Cordon Bleu and the California Culinary Arts School. She has worked as sous chef and pastry chef for large gourmet fund raising functions and has taught a series of pastry courses. To remove the poundage acquired with her primary passion, she rows, goes trekking around the world, canoes, roller blades, bikes and sails.
Jay Messina – Candidate for Treasurer
Jay has been a practitioner of human factors and usability engineering for over fifteen years. He started his career in the field while working at the Victims Services Agency for the city of New York. As an employee of this agency he conducted research and assisted the agency's systems development organization in the design of user interfaces for New York 's Supreme court computer systems and conducted usability evaluations.
After two years Jay left the Victim Services Agency to accept an employee position in AT&T as a human factors engineer. There he was responsible for the user interface design of AT&T Advanced 800 phone system and later served as director of his AT&T division's usability laboratory. Following his AT&T career Jay eventually began an independent consulting service in human factors and usability. For the past nine years he has been a principal owner of Behavioral Science Associates, Inc., a corporation specializing in the design and development of Voice User Interfaces, Web applications, and IT consulting and recruitment.
Richard Herring – Candidate for Secretary
Dick Herring specializes in designing good customer experiences when people use products, websites and information. He has deep experience in user experience design, complex user interfaces, information architecture, web technologies and creating accessible information for blind and low-vision users. He has worked most recently at Business Edge Solutions, Inc. and as part of his practice at "Usable, Accessible, and Critical".
Dick is active in local and national User Experience organizations. He is a charter member of the AIIM's PDF/Universal Accessibility ISO Working Group developing a standard for accessible Adobe PDF documents (AIIM.org/standards).
Dick has worked in data, telecommunications, complex products, and financial compliance applications for GTE/Government Systems, Telcordia (formerly Bellcore), Bell Laboratories and Avaya Labs, Inc. He was also a faculty member at Tufts University in the departments of Psychology and Education.