Scott McDaniel

Senior UX / Product Design Consultant

I'm a senior UX consultant who has worked on everything from mobile apps to scientific instrumentation. I care about excellent design and genuine usability — and about the processes that make both possible across a product's full development. I'm looking to make a difference beyond merely accruing money and gadgets, through the craft and perspective of this profession.

Specialties

  • user experience
  • information design
  • interaction design
  • user research
  • user testing, in-person and remote
  • rapid prototyping
  • educating and evangelizing UX practices and principles within your organization
  • community interaction
  • being gravity
  • extensive experience working with remote and global teams for both product design and client services

Now that you've re-read my LinkedIn bio, I'll dig in a little more.

I really dig this whole user experience thing. I got into the industry during the late-90s dot-com rollercoaster as an HTML coder, frankly because I didn't know what direction I wanted for my life. Designing web pages, I started appreciating the principles behind what-went-where-and-why, got some great mentoring early on, and met a lot of kick-ass people along the way. A co-worker eventually introduced me to the work of Edward Tufte, whose ideas about the clear, beautiful presentation of information set me off exploring what it takes to make a page as usable as it is "pretty." Conversations with library-science friends led me to information architecture and UX design — and that lit a passion I never expected to find.

And so here we are now. My latest roles have focused on designing software platforms that bring together large suites of applications into a common framework.

What this path often entails Persuading people from across teams and companies that we're sincerely trying to make it easier on your users.