In 1991, I packed up my VW Rabbit and drove from CMU in Pittsburgh to Cupertino for a summer internship at Apple Computer as a Usability Researcher. That summer changed my life. Personal computing was an emerging technology. A few people carried around a Blackberry but digital devices were for the most part concepts. The internet was on the horizon but limited by dial-up modems. But that summer at Apple, through one-way mirrors in research labs, I learned the basics of User-Centered Design — a methodology that continues to be a best practice for designing solutions that meet the needs of the target users. I returned to Apple after grad school and worked as a researcher and then a manager. These were formative years in digital innovation and user research was quickly becoming a fundamental part of product design.

After over 3 decades in this field, I remain a passionate advocate for the end user, always stressing the needs, wants, and desires of the user in defining, designing and implementing solutions. The technology we use to support UX research and design has evolved, but there is still no substitute for meeting with users and watching them as they work to fully understand how technology does and does not meet their needs.