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David is the primary developer and holder of the mental model: a user-centric representation of the product, how it works and how users interact with it. David starts by gaining an understanding of the big picture. This includes gathering inputs from stakeholders/users, and reviewing product concepts, key functionality, market space, target users and company/product directions. Through an iterative user-centric design process, he creates a high-level mental model and a high-level information architecture, which serve as the foundation for an implementable, usable, supportable solution. David has extensive experience in design, be it ground-up or recasting existing applications to fit new interaction models and user interfaces, and in synthesizing and validating product concepts through iterative design. His techniques include the use of task analysis, focus groups, storyboarding, and rapid prototyping. David is expert in the realm of enterprise applications, whether delivered natively or through the web, and is rapidly expanding in the consumer application arena. He has designed for the gamut of Web-based interfaces, including Web 2.0 and rich web interfaces such as AJAX, Flash/Flex and Java, as well as for native Windows, Mac and Unix based applications. David holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Northwestern University and has been designing User Interfaces since 1984. He founded Mental Models in 1994 to provide a multidisciplinary approach to the user-centric design of products. He has previously been employed by Bell Labs as a Chief Architect and by Make Systems as their Industrial Design Director. All of David's professional experience has been "in the trenches" -- as a designer, architect, and engineering manager. This has provided him a perspective built on the foundation of solid fundamentals as well as the realities of "getting products out the door." David has been successful at carrying the user-centric perspective through all phases of the Product Realization process - from design to implementation; and several of the products he has designed have won industry awards. | 