[Foundation-l] Introducing our Usability Team

Wed Mar 4 00:52:18 UTC 2009

Please join me welcoming the new members of the Usability Project Team.

Arash Boostani, a fourteen-year tech-veteran from Genentech, has joined 
the project team as a Senior Software Developer.  Arash also previously 
directed the development team of an environmental non-profit directory 
service called WiserEarth, which runs on collaborative software similar 
to MediaWiki.  At WiserEarth, Arash led the way in making the software 
available as open-source software for the development community.

As of February 1st, Trevor Parscal was internally transferred from the 
Wikimedia tech team to the position of Software Developer on the 
Usability project.  Trevor has over eight years experience as an 
independent consultant in both software development and user interface 
design.  After joining WMF, Trevor worked on data center management 
tools, amongst other development projects.

Parul Vora, a former resident designer of the Design Innovation Team at 
Yahoo! (Yhaus) and researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, joined the 
team.  Parul brings a unique combined talent of user experience 
research, design, and technology to the team.  She has worked on various 
research and design projects such as experimental information interfaces 
and an event-based media sharing application. At Intel Research Labs, 
she researched open-source physical computing platforms, their sensors 
and actuators, and visual programming languages for mobile phone platforms.

We are currently interviewing candidates for the second software 
developer position.

It is my honor and privilege to work with Arash, Trevor and Parul on the 
Wikipedia Usability Initiative. I am excited to have the mixture of 
great talents on the team.

Naoko Komura

Program Manager
Wikimedia Foundation

-- 
Support Free Knowledge:  http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate