education building

This morning on the CBC’s early edition, Rick interviewed Qixing Zheng, “Microsoft Canada’s first User Experience Advisor“. I was surprised they were doing such an interview in the first place, but more so that she is M. Canada’s FIRST user experience professional. I guess this responsibility has, until now been directed from the mothership or something. Regardless, it gave me some hope that my own role (as ‘experience designer‘ for several years now) here in the LIDC may become a little more recognized and understood. Of course it also begs the question, is such a position even needed at a university? A question I will attempt to tackle in future posts here.

The announcement was made back in March on the “User Experience Connection“, and I was interested to learn that Qixing is a masters graduate from UBC in Human Computer Interaction. I thought the interview went fairly well and I appreciated her explanation of what the role of the user experience professional is all about (even Ricki seemed to get it).  Her website states that her passion in this area is

…deeply rooted in helping people to improve their user experiences with the technology they rely on everyday. To me, a good user experience is simple, consistent, pleasing, and reliable.

I have been trying to update my profile page on the wiki we use in the LIDC (here, but soon maybe here), with a small blurb about my approach to creating better user experiences on SFU websites, and the projects I have worked on.  So far I’d say its still in an early draft form, but I look forward to articulating what I try to do here, especially in light of the recent news.