Ronald C. Barbas

rcbarbas@yahoo.comhttp://www.ronbarbas.com

Summary

IT & Human Factors professional with expertise in enhancing functionality and usability in the design of systems, products and procedures. Highly skilled in research and survey design and implementation. Adept in Business Analyst role determining end user requirements and serving as an interface with technical teams in the design of systems that meet corporate needs.

Human Factors Skills 

• Survey design
• Interface usability analysis
• Task Analysis
• Interface design
• Prototyping
• Experimental design

Mar 2009 – present

• Developing four patents for driver interaction with automobiles, and a fifth for a handicapped toothbrush, to include:
• researching prior patents (prior art search),
• writing patent claims,
• building mock ups and prototypes
• examining and securing funding for studies and prototyping,
• building business partnerships to further the project,
• developing business plans.
• Researching and writing a book.
• Web design consulting to include wireframing, site map, user flow, web design.
• Fulton Science Academy Parent Volunteer Organization Communications Chair.

Related Experience

Human Factors Engineer/Senior Information Architect   Jul 2008 – Feb 2009

MDI Group /AT&T                                                                Alpharetta, Ga.

• Served as lead usability analyst for redesign of the AT&T employee Help Desk Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Performed requirements gathering to understand the functions and goals of the different Help Desks, which received over 250,000 phone calls per month all routing from a single phone number. Detailed and proposed, via Microsoft Visio, a single website design solution as well as vanity phone numbers for separating Help Desks.
• Researched AT&T customer compliance failure with Terms and Conditions via in-house collaboration with other teams and proposed, via Microsoft PowerPoint, seven different solutions based on scope of project.
• Collaborated on design of activation flow and texting procedures within technical constraints for AT&T GoPhone Development team, to include distilling 60 pages of instructions into a single page Visio document with three separate process flows. Member of a three-person team that developed and conducted usability testing of think-aloud and time on task procedures.
• Member of three-person team to improve AT&T’s IVR entry menu and phone plan data retrieval system. Analyzed the system, made changes to improve efficiency, performed usability tests of the changes and then recommended the changes be made based on results of analysis and testing.
• Researched previous studies and work comparing voice response systems versus touch tone/DTMF input for IVR use. This research was performed via the Georgia Tech library intranet and online.

Environment: MS Office, Microsoft Visio, video and audio recording booth

 Usability Specialist                                                                May 2007 – Sep 2007

Aelera Group                                                                          Alpharetta, Ga.

• Performed Graphical User Interface (GUI) analysis to determine website features that best prompted end users in selecting links to products and services.
• Managed the design of market research surveys for 2,500-3,000 participants from inception to completion with full ownership of analysis and reporting.
• Cartographic layered mapping of database information.
• Wrote summaries of research results.

Environment: MS Office, Microsoft Visio

 Research Analyst                                                                  Dec 2005 – Feb 2007             McKesson Corp. (Provider Technologies)                          Alpharetta, Ga.

• Supported marketing services group via design and implementation of surveys and other marketing research tools.
• Extracted data from multiple databases and delivered business / marketing intelligence and decision support reporting for management.
• Performed extensive research in the home healthcare monitoring systems industry and provided critical data in determining feasibility of entering this market segment.
• Devised a file archiving system that enhanced data retrieval efficiency for the market research group by an estimated 25-30%.
• Managed the design of market research surveys for 30-1100 participants from inception to completion with full ownership of analysis and reporting on smaller surveys.
• Cultivated and maintained critical communications with MPT business units in support of the Marketing Research group. Served as single-point-of-contact on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Served as primary lead in a challenging data analysis ownership transfer leveraging existing MS Access database skills while learning Business Objects (BO) and Siebel database skills.
• Mined 4 databases using MS Access, Siebel and BO data mining tools extracting 30-20,000 records in each of the approximately 35 searches performed monthly.
• Wrote summaries of research results.

Environment: MS Office, Siebel, SPSS
Research Scientist / Graduate Research Assistant             Apr 2001 – Jul 2003   Georgia Institute of Technology                                                         Atlanta, Ga.

• Identify potential experimental design flaws.
• Worked with 3 HCI professors in cutting-edge research relating to determining subtleties of awareness in peripheral vision for employees working on both central and individual computer monitors.
• Performed Graphical User Interface (GUI) analysis and design to determine website features that best prompted end users in selecting links to products and services.
• Determined end user requirements and completed iterative project design and prototyping via user interviews and sampling for proposed Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) for Atlanta Botanical Garden.
• Identified and resolved a major project design flaw that increased peripheral vision study accuracy from 18% to 85%.
• Implemented eye tracking for peripheral vision study.
• Conducted comprehensive literature reviews, determined experimental dependent and independent variables, tested theoretical hypotheses and applied research methods to the design of experimental procedures.
• Completed statistical analysis of experimental results via SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Sciences)
• Constructed task/business analysis for proposed implementation of a paperless office.
• Conducted Ethnographic interviews to identify medication home use patterns.
• Created PowerPoint presentations and analysis charts.

Environment: MS Office, GazeTracker, SPSS

 U.S. Air Force and Reserves                                                            1980-2004

Air Traffic Control Radar Specialist – electronics technician

Space Communications Specialist – electronics technician

Medical Technician – developed knowledge of human anatomy and physiology and ergonomics

 Organizations

CHI-A

Georgia Tech GVU

SigChi

Cub Scouts

M. S. Human Computer Interaction
B.S. Applied Experimental Psychology

 Technical schools

U. S. Air Force

• Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)
• Academic Instructor
• Medical Service Specialist
• Space Communications Specialist
• Air Traffic Control Radar maintenance