Hi folks,
It’s my great pleasure to announce that today, Jared Zimmerman will
start as Wikimedia Foundation’s Director of User Experience. As UX
Director, Jared will lead the design team and have a hands-on role on
the team, contributing his own design work. It’s still a small team
(Brandon, Vibha, May, and Pau), but we expect to hire an additional
3-4 designers in the coming 12-18 months.
Prior to Wikimedia, Jared was Principal Interaction Designer at
Autodesk, where he worked with engineers, visual artists, and user
experience researchers to create new software solutions for
architecture and design professionals with an emphasis on AutoCAD for
Mac and soon to be released online design collaboration tools. Jared
has led cross-disciplinary design teams in his roles at Autodesk,
Ammunition Group, and iconmobile, including creative direction.
At Autodesk, he was part of the transition to agile development and
helped his design teams apply those principles to their work. During
his time there he worked with design management to establish designers
as product owners in the scrum process, to further integrate them into
the development process from start to finish, as well as teaching his
team best practices for use of agile design tools.
Jared has degrees in Graphic Design (BGD) and Fine Art Photography
(BFA) from the Rhode Island School of Design. His photography has been
in featured in publications such as Travel + Leisure Magazine,
ZonaRetiro, and Huffington Post.
In addition to starting in his new job, Jared is also planning his
wedding in July to his fiancée Shannon. [1] In his spare time Jared is
wrapping up a remodel to their home, working on his first iPhone app,
experimental cooking, photographing the bay area & abroad [2], and
answering questions on Quora. [3]
I look forward to Jared’s leadership in helping elevate a delightful,
consistent and efficient User Experience to becoming a key measure of
success for our work.
Please join me in welcoming Jared! :-)
Erik
[1]
http://shannonbadiee.com/
[2]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spoinknet/
[3]
https://www.quora.com/Jared-Zimmerman/answers
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation