My news - and why I've been so quiet for a while, is that I'm moving from
Sun Microsystems to
Google, to do more User Exeperience Research.
It is of course wonderful to be moving to Google; but sad to be leaving Sun.
During my 5 years at Sun I've learnt lots (though never enough!) about developers and systems administrators. I've enjoyed working on developer tools projects (a couple of my studies are oneline:
1,
2); I've worked on Sun's Desktop:
Java Desktop System, the
N1 (datacenter management software), a project on collaborative technologies for the internet; and
Java Enterprise System (Sun's middleware offerings).
At Sun I got to work with a bunch of bright, dedicated folks, and work in a company that is at the forefront for implementing remote working. Learning to respond to the challenges that brings has been very worthwhile. I have had great managers, enjoyed being mentored (I was lucky enough to have
Ingrid Van Den Hoogan, VP Brand Experience and Community Marketing, to be my mentor at Sun), and I have personally enjoyed mentoring at a distance colleagues in Europe.
I've used many user research methods during the course of my time at Sun, worked with developers, architects, marketing folks, and sales, and got to visit customers in their places of work in Scandinavia, Europe, and the US (never got to Asia or Australia - darn!). Due to working with the
NetBeans team in Prague, I have have made friends who live in the Czech Republic, and am looking forward to visiting them - just for the fun of it, this summer!
Sun has also provided me with great training opportunities both internal and external. I have learned about Contextual Design by taking
Karen Holtzblatt's
Contextual Design Workshop, heard
Edward Tufte present one of his
courses, participate in
Net Objectives course on
Effective Use Cases, attended
CSCW '04,
DUX'05, and most recently completed
Richard Anderson and Lillian Svec's
UCSC Extention course on "
Managing User Experience Groups".
Sun, has provided me with opportunities, some good friends for life - I hope - and been a great place to develop my career. I'll miss it - and
totally root for the company - but I'm so ready for the new opportunities and challenges that Google has to offer... can't wait to get there now!
More blogs about
google,
sun microsystems
