Professional Resume

Peter Vanags
812 Ocean Surf Drive
Solana Beach, CA 92075-2625

tel/fax: (858) 350-0720
cell: (970) 209-5788
peter@vanags.com

PROFILE

I am a user experience and user interface designer, software architect and software engineer with 20 years of technology and design experience on a broad range of software, hardware, network, server and device platforms.

I am seeking consulting opportunities that bring my broad technical, software engineering, design and usability experience to benefit interesting projects.

PROJECT SKILLS

User Experience Designer: needs and task analyses, hardware and software prototyping, usability testing, documentation and specification.

User Interface Designer: conceptual design, graphic design, art direction, illustration, mockups, final production art.

Software and Systems Architect: application, server, network and systems architectures and infrastructures.

Software Engineer: code specification and API design, prototype and proof-of-concept to final production code.

Team and Client Meeting Lead: experienced technical lead, coordinator, whiteboard artist and presenter.

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT SKILLS

WEB DEVELOPMENT SKILLS

SYSTEMS/IT SKILLS

WORK EXPERIENCE

My work experience over the past 20 years has been primarily as a self-employed business owner and independent consultant. I have spent periods of time as an employee as well, during most of 2007 and in the early 1990s. The companies I've owned, my past consulting clients and former employers are detailed in the lists below.

COMPANIES

Electronic Ink has been my consulting and software publishing business for most of my professional life. The company started as a graphic design, illustration and digital prepress consulting firm. Over the past 20 years, the business has taken on diverse projects in graphic design, digital pre-press, exhibit design, interactive CD-ROM production and more. Electronic Ink's current software projects include publishing a suite of Xtras for Macromedia Director. http://www.printomatic.com

Thin Air is a web technology design and development company that I founded in 1997, ran for 7 years, then sold to new owners in 2005. Thin Air's primary business is to build and host client web sites based around a proprietary suite of web application frameworks, components and services. All of Thin Air's technologies were designed and developed by me. http://www.thinairweb.com

CONSULTING CLIENTS

Software consultant to Full Swing's Research and Development group. Responsible for architecture and integration of the company's next generation real-time 3D golf simulator product prototype, including plugin design and development, proof-of-concept testing, debugging, UI and display architecture, DirectX integration and frame rate optimization. http://www.fullswinggolf.com

User Interface Designer and Programmer, responsible for designing and programming UI styles, skins and widgets for the next generation of 3VR's product user interface. Created widget designs and mockups, then implemented them as a collection of finished C#/.NET base classes. http://www.3vr.com

User Experience contractor, responsible for product design, interface design, software architecture and web application engineering for Visto Mobile: a new web based, consumer oriented product offering from Visto. http://mobile.visto.com

User interface and software engineering consultant for the Document Express email and contact management product. Designed both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X versions of the product's user interface and desktop icon family, and assisted the company in refining the product’s feature list and shaping its functionality.http://www.documentexpress.com

Special project assisting the Organic executive team in the selection of an enterprise project management system. Needs and task analyses, on-line user surveys, final white paper report.

Windows human interface and application programmer (C++/MFC/Java) for 3D VRML editing tool.

Software architect and lead programmer for a series of K-6 classroom learning tools on 12 CD-ROMs, published by Simon & Schuster.

A wide range of projects for many internal clients, including trade show exhibit design, CD-ROM design and development, human interface design, knowledge navigation design for Apple's programmer technical documentation, and other consulting.

Human interface design, system specification, and video prototyping for interactive television pilot project at The Paramount Media Kitchen and Viacom New York.

Human interface design and specification and software engineering for Ex Machina's entire wireless messaging product line.

Human interface design, artwork, specification and style guide for network management tools.

Design for an interactive geology kiosk in Gem & Mineral Hall.

EMPLOYMENT

Senior member of technical staff, responsible for software architecture, software engineering, library APIs and user experience in R&D efforts across PacketVideo's product lines for mobile, desktop and consumer device platform. Cross-development on Win32, Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux platforms using C++ and Flash / ActionScript / Flex languages.

Responsible for a broad range of product design and implementation tasks including overall user experience, hardware and software user interface design, industrial design, hardware specification, software architecture, hardware and software prototyping, market research and more.

Senior designer and consultant to U dot I's clients (included in Consulting Clients list). Actively participated in ACM SigCHI conferences, workshops, and ACM research papers.

Lead user interface designer for the Studio's early groundbreaking multimedia projects, kiosks, and commercial CD-ROMs. Sole programmer or member of the programming team for many of these products.

Designer and programmer for Apple CD-ROM publications, people finder kiosks for the TED conference, and other early-era multimedia projects.

EDUCATION

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

PUBLICATIONS