Resume of Alan Wexelblat

32 Peach Orchard Rd., Burlington, MA 01803

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Phone: (617) 283-0234

U.S. Citizen

4/20013- present

Senior Design Manager, Aspen Technology, Inc, Burlington, MA

Managed design, usability, and user experience work for enhancements to Aspen Tech's enterprise suite of engineering products. Led innovations resulting in improved usability and product use; for example, 84% customer engagement with targeted feature after one redesign.

Product award 2016 for excellence in design for the V9 suite release.

Led teams and cross-functional projects including development, PM, and QE. Mentored and supported junior UX and design staff for user interviews, requirements gathering, and user testing activities throughout the lifecycle using RUP and agile methods. Design technologies included Photoshop, Illustrator, Axure, and Balsamiq.

Aspen Technology is the leading provider of software solutions that optimize the design and operation of manufacturing plants and the associated supply chain for the process industries, primarily energy, engineering & construction, and chemicals.

11/2008- 3/2013

Design Lead, Lime Brokerage LLC (a division of Wedbush, Inc), Waltham, MA

Responsible for complete product UI cycle from requirements gathering through wireframes, visual prototypes, all design documentation, evaluation, and work with development teams to produce final product in FLEX and Adobe AIR for Web and desktop. Led team of two visual designers.

Designed and evaluated all user interfaces for Lime's proprietery suite of trading, brokerage administration, risk analytics, and metrics products for high-frequency stat/arb traders and buy-side algorithmic traders in equities and options. Ran beta test programs and usability evaluations. Completed designs for Wedbush's upcoming ClientLink mobile (iPad) app.

Lime Brokerage is a sophisticated technological brokerage known for its high performance low-latency infrastructure and market-neutral best execution delivery. Brokerage won “Biggest Innovators on Wall St” from Security Technology Monitor and “Most Cutting-Edge IT Initiative” from American Financial Technology. Design technologies include Photoshop, Visio, Balsamiq, and Dreamweaver.

3/2006-11/2008

Senior Usability Specialist, Charles River Development (CRD), Burlington, MA

Sole usability, interaction design, and human factors person for CRD's enterprise investment management systems (Windows PC desktop client & Web interfaces). Designed and tested UI, forms, Web pages, and supporting materials.  Developed over 300 icons and visual language for new release.  Wrote company-wide GUI standards & guidelines.

Evaluated existing screens and proposed redesigns in conjunction with product management, users, and financial services domain experts. Wrote development specifications for core UI components used by all development groups, including new widgets and interaction designs (workflows). Led company-wide internal product evaluation and feedback sessions.

Charles River IMS is the industry-leading investment management system for brokerage and trading houses with over $1 billion in assets for both equities and fixed income.  Client written in C# (.NET) and Java; Web interfaces in Ajax, CSS, and HTML. Design technologies included Visio, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Excel, and Powerpoint.

5/2004-10/2005

Senior Staff, Human Factors, EMC-Legato, Nashua, NH

Designed interfaces for Legal Investigator, Compliance Reviewer, and Administrative applications for enterprise-scale messaging (email/IM) archiving, legal discovery, supervision, and storage management products (EmailXtender, EmailXaminer product family). Focused on financial services marketplace including NASD and SEC 17-A regulatory compliance rules. Gathered requirements, validated models and demonstrated prototypes with Fortune 50 Wall Street customers.

Wrote requirements and design documents, created user and task models, prototyped designs, presented to customers, gathered evaluation data from typical customer segments. Worked directly with all stakeholders, including development, QA, product management, and product marketing groups. Technologies included Visio and Documentum Content Server.

2/2003-5/2004

Principal Usability Consultant (contract), HOVIR, Burlington, MA

Built personal retirement-planning Web application, designed interface screens, and evaluated existing designs for clients including LTSave, Inc. (http://www.ltsave.com/), Entertainment Image Consultants (http://www.entertainmentimage.com/), and Molecular, Inc (http://www.molecular.com/). Responsible for product and project management, Web site production supervision, QA, management of RFP and vendor relations. Hands-on production of interface designs including wireframes, use cases, user testing, and defect management/tracking, using technologies such as C#, ASP.NET and PHP.

Software manager for Bremer's MetaStreamer middleware data transformation product for financial services. Created schedules, handled task assignments, coordinated customer engagements with field engineering and product management. Led revision and improvements to product UI and usability. Hands-on responsibility for all documentation and training materials in RoboHelp. Participated in implementation of SWIFT standard message processing project.

8/2001-11/2002

Senior Consultant, OpenLink Software, Inc. Burlington, MA

Redesigned interface to Virtuoso SQL-XML object-relational database and Web services, producing specifications, Dreamweaver prototypes, and information architecture. Produced five product interfaces totaling over 200 screens. Performed usability QA work on all projects. Rewrote multiple chapters of Virtuoso documentation in DocBook XML. Wrote documentation standards guidelines.

Managed overseas development team producing XML standards-based product comparable to Microsoft Access. Coordinated with other overseas developers and managers on multiple simultaneous projects. Supervised XQuery public demonstration and documentation revision, also done by overseas teams.

7/2000-3/2001

Manager, User Interaction Group, Verbind, Inc. Lexington, MA

Worked as both Project Manager and Senior UI Specialist. Responsible for all aspects of new product interface and user experience. Led cross-functional teams of coders (C/C++ or Java on NT) and designers building user interfaces for Verbind's new products, using thick- and thin-client technologies including ASP, JSP, and JavaScript. Set roles and schedules as well as task assignments for developers.

Hands-on work as information architect, designer, and usability reviewer. Led specification efforts for new UIs using object-action design methodology. Complete front-end lifecycle responsibilities including customer interviews, creation of architecture, overall design in Dreamweaver, and functional specification.

Initiated and led company-wide effort to integrate usability criteria into all lifecycle phases. Created projects, set priorities, and assigned resources as part of management team. Mentored and tutored developers and QA personnel.

2/1999-7/2000

Senior Information Architect, Mainspring Communications, Inc. Cambridge, MA

Led team in designing and building Mainspring Web site using Vignette StoryServer. Won CIO Magazine "WebBusiness 50/50" award for outstanding Web site July 2000.

Designed content management system in Dreamweaver allowing Production personnel to update site content as needed without IT department coding. Specified system architecture to meet needs of Marketing, IT, Production, and Delivery as Mainspring tripled in size. Wrote client-oriented requirements and specifications for new products with Marketing and executive leaders, expanding Mainspring's offerings.

As acting Director of Development assisted CTO in developing budgets, specifying purchases and building relationships with outside vendors. Managed multiple simultaneous projects.

9/1992-12/1998

Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab M.S and Ph.D. Programs, Cambridge, MA

Researched agent systems, ecommerce, and intelligent interfaces. Dissertation system (Footprints) was a two-year effort building a client-server Java system for aiding Web navigation. Led teams of 1-5 building systems in Java. Specified responsibilities, set schedules, evaluated work product and personnel. Researched multimodal systems and natural methods of interaction with computers. Thesis system in C++ to analyze gestural input, as part of 5-person team for ARPA program on next-generation interfaces. Supervised UROPs working project components in C/C++.

9/1989-5/1992

Staff Systems Engineer, Professional Workstation Group, Bull Worldwide Information Systems, Billerica, MA

Architect, lead implementer, team leader for professional workstation user interface, competitor to Windows (similar to GNOME). Environment built using C on SCO Unix with X and Motif. Led team in design and implementation of system for business and professional users. Led port to MIPS RISC hardware. Also worked with customers in pre-sales support, product rollout, and demonstration phases. Responsible for conversion of printed documentation to on-line hypertext system. Product initial ship 12/90.

Responsible for all groupware applications on the Professional Workstation product. Designed and specified a suite of five horizontal applications to support users in cooperative work efforts such as task planning and electronic meetings.

7/1985-12/1988

Member, Technical Staff, MCC Software Technology Program, Austin TX

Implemented visualization tools for software developers, using C/Unix on Sun workstations, related to improving productivity and quality of large software-systems by augmenting the design and specification parts of the life cycle. Developed prototype next-generation interface system in large object-oriented environment in Common Lisp/CLOS system built on X. Researched techniques for design and construction of artificial realities.

5/1984-7/1985

Systems Programmer, Compilers/Languages Section, Burroughs Corporation (now Unisys), Tredyffrin PA

Implemented debugger in Fortran compiler and helped develop integrated software development environment combining editor, compiler, debugger, and command shell.