Inside Hues
Product Marketing Manager Lisa Crounse takes you on a behind the scenes tour of what goes into developing a new technology for Autodesk Labs. Lisa introduces you to members of the Impression development team and shares their unique ideas and insights.
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- posted 12/22/06 by Lisa Crounse Jay is in the house - Product Designer Spotlight
- My last entry gave you a glimpse at some of the User Interface improvements coming soon to a technology preview near you. "Who figures out how that stuff should look and work?" you might ask yourself. (I used to ask this before I actually met software developers. Surprisieng, I know.)
At Autodesk we have teams of product designers who work with the developers to figure out how the heck this stuff should work. They do a ton of interviews and usability tests with customers just like you to see how people react to different designs and workflows.
Today I'd like to introduce you to Jay Behr who manages Product Design for Impression.
Q: Who are you and why are you here?
A: I was an architect with an interaction design background. I’d TA interaction design classes in Grad school at UCLA. During the tech boom, I made the transition to an instant messaging startup. Once I had a software experience, I worked back towards architecture and that brought me to Autodesk.
Q: What do you do as a product designer?
A: I manage the product design team as well as contribute as a designer myself. Everyone on my team draws on experience making real presentation drawings in the field to design easy to use features for Impression.
Q: What has been the most exciting part of working on Impression?
A: The best part has been seeing our user’s enthusiasm for the concept and later usability quality of Impression.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for Product Design?
A: Making often complex software easy to use. CAD drawings and CAD workflows are not simple, but we work very hard to make the user experience of making presentation drawings as simple as possible in Impression.
Q: What else should we know about you?
Over the last 4 years I’ve designed features such as the Sheet Set Manager, and Dynamic Input in AutoCAD and countless others. I also use Impression and AutoCAD in production on the design of my own house which I’ll break ground on this Summer. It’s good to eat your own dog-food, so to speak.
Coming soon to a blog near you...another sneak peek at what is in store for Impression...0 comments In Inside Hues >