biography |
Carolyn Snyder has 23 years of experience in the software industry and has spent the past 13 years practicing user-centered methods, focusing on usability testing and paper prototyping. In March 1999, Carolyn started Snyder Consulting to specialize in hands-on work with software and web site development teams.
From 1993-1999, Carolyn was a principal consultant at User Interface Engineering, one of the country's leading usability consulting firms, where she worked for founder Jared Spool. She conducted usability testing projects for dozens of high-tech clients, involving software, web sites, and web applications for a wide variety of industries. Carolyn taught some of UIE's most popular courses and wrote numerous articles.
Carolyn literally wrote the book on Paper Prototyping, which was published in 2003. She is also co-author of two other usability books. In 2000, Carolyn collaborated with Jakob Nielsen, Rolf Molich and Susan Farrell on an e-commerce usability study of 20 business-to-consumer sites. The results of this work were published in the book E-commerce User Experience. In 1997, Carolyn and several UIE cohorts wrote Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide.
Carolyn teaches a paper prototyping class at Bentley College as part of their certificate program in Information Design . She continues to write articles and speak at conferences. She is active in professional organizations (Usability Professionals Association, ACM SIG CHI) at both the local and international levels, and is a regular contributor to usability discussion lists.
Prior to becoming a usability professional, Carolyn spent 10 years working at Landis & Staefa, a building controls company, as a software engineer and project manager. Carolyn has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Originally a Midwestern girl, Carolyn now lives in lovely Derry NH, 40 miles north of Boston, with her husband and three cats. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, motorcycling, reading sci-fi/fantasy, fostering cats for her local shelter, and removing cat hair from the furniture.
Snyder Consulting * (603) 216-2255 * csnyder at snyderconsulting dot net