Chris Connors
Design Leader, Educator, Mentor, and award-winning Designer specializing in consumer, enterprise, and challenging domains.
Pittsburgh, PA, USAI've been designing award winning, easy-to-use products that people love for Consumer, Enterprise, Aerospace, and Government for 25 years. For nearly as many years I've been building, nurturing, and directing teams of designers, engineers and researchers to create those great products and systems of products.
My primary obligation to our users is making certain our products are useful, useable, and appealing. Does the product solve the right problem? Is the solution accessible? Does its appearance please, or even delight, the user?
Similarly, my obligation to our organization is making sure the product design is producible within the constraints of time and development resources. Is it implementable? Can we make the delivery date? What are the developmental vs. design trade offs?
These questions and more are addressed through an iterative design process - exploration, identification, design and evaluation, development and evaluation, delivery and documentation.
Specialties: Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, User Interface Design, Usability Evaluation, Creative Direction, Recruiting great talent, seeing the forest *and* the trees.
Design Systems, Tablet, Mobile (iOS and Android), Desktop (Mac OS X and Windows), and web-based consumer application design.
My primary obligation to our users is making certain our products are useful, useable, and appealing. Does the product solve the right problem? Is the solution accessible? Does its appearance please, or even delight, the user?
Similarly, my obligation to our organization is making sure the product design is producible within the constraints of time and development resources. Is it implementable? Can we make the delivery date? What are the developmental vs. design trade offs?
These questions and more are addressed through an iterative design process - exploration, identification, design and evaluation, development and evaluation, delivery and documentation.
Specialties: Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, User Interface Design, Usability Evaluation, Creative Direction, Recruiting great talent, seeing the forest *and* the trees.
Design Systems, Tablet, Mobile (iOS and Android), Desktop (Mac OS X and Windows), and web-based consumer application design.
Work Experience
IBM
Design Principal, Public Cloud
Developed and improved design, delivery, and quality programs within IBM Cloud.
Collaborated on the design and pitch of a visionary new approach for IBM provisioning, delivery, and management experience to executives across the business.
Drove attrition below expected rates by surveying market compensation rates and highlighting gaps in our compensation, so IBM Cloud Design could meaningfully address those gaps.
Restructured Cloud’s main evaluative method to include representative tasks to perform, proxies for representative users, and an aspect capture template easily transferable into GitHub issues; teams became more invested in both participation and outcomes, increasing issue generation and close rates and steadily increasing NPS scores for IBM Cloud.
Collaborated on the design and pitch of a visionary new approach for IBM provisioning, delivery, and management experience to executives across the business.
Drove attrition below expected rates by surveying market compensation rates and highlighting gaps in our compensation, so IBM Cloud Design could meaningfully address those gaps.
Restructured Cloud’s main evaluative method to include representative tasks to perform, proxies for representative users, and an aspect capture template easily transferable into GitHub issues; teams became more invested in both participation and outcomes, increasing issue generation and close rates and steadily increasing NPS scores for IBM Cloud.
March 2021
- May 2023
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
IBM
Design Principal/Carbon Design System Adoption and Delivery Coach
Enabled and accelerated adoption of the IBM Design Language by supporting teams migrating to Carbon v10.
Provided guidance and reinforcement to foster, sustain, and deepen team commitment; delivered the structure to focus teams on correctly employing the available resources through real-time coaching.
Provided guidance and reinforcement to foster, sustain, and deepen team commitment; delivered the structure to focus teams on correctly employing the available resources through real-time coaching.
November 2019
- February 2021
Pennsylvania, United States
IBM
Design Principal/Manager Carbon Design System Team
Managed designers, front-end developers, and researchers who built the open-source Carbon Design System, used around the world to accelerate delivery rates and improve usefulness and appeal.
Fostered collaboration between Carbon and Brand teams to isolate technical concerns and issues, focused the team on delivering easy components quickly and devoting resources to address challenging items; arresting attrition and allowing the team to thrive and grow.
The team delivered versions 8 and 9 leading up to the seismic change of Carbon v10, which embodied a new IBM design language and provided design system consumers with a clear, well-defined, and containable migration path to the new language.
The Carbon Design System saves IBM designers and developers hundreds of person/hours per offering, delivering higher quality and more consistent products that work together and work as customers expect.
Fostered collaboration between Carbon and Brand teams to isolate technical concerns and issues, focused the team on delivering easy components quickly and devoting resources to address challenging items; arresting attrition and allowing the team to thrive and grow.
The team delivered versions 8 and 9 leading up to the seismic change of Carbon v10, which embodied a new IBM design language and provided design system consumers with a clear, well-defined, and containable migration path to the new language.
The Carbon Design System saves IBM designers and developers hundreds of person/hours per offering, delivering higher quality and more consistent products that work together and work as customers expect.
November 2017
- October 2019
Pennsylvania, United States
IBM
Design Principal
Led multi-disciplined groups of designers, researchers, and engineers through development and delivery of designs for IBM Cloud Platform and defined platform behaviors, standards, and governance.
Collaborated with Engineering, Offering Management, and divisional leadership, initiating and negotiating how resources within and across divisions and products perceived, embraced, and incorporated design.
Chartered work to broaden the tooling, resources, outreach, onboarding, and revenue generation for First Party (IBM and Partners) Cloud Platform service development; within the last 7 years, IBM Cloud Platform has transformed from fledgling offering to credible competitor in the space.
Directed design and negotiated technical requirements and compromises that vastly improved the capabilities of the IBM Cloud Console, growing consistent YoY revenue growth and length of engagements.
Catalyzed design community engagement, education, recruiting, and mentoring.
Collaborated with Engineering, Offering Management, and divisional leadership, initiating and negotiating how resources within and across divisions and products perceived, embraced, and incorporated design.
Chartered work to broaden the tooling, resources, outreach, onboarding, and revenue generation for First Party (IBM and Partners) Cloud Platform service development; within the last 7 years, IBM Cloud Platform has transformed from fledgling offering to credible competitor in the space.
Directed design and negotiated technical requirements and compromises that vastly improved the capabilities of the IBM Cloud Console, growing consistent YoY revenue growth and length of engagements.
Catalyzed design community engagement, education, recruiting, and mentoring.
June 2015
- May 2023
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Carnegie Mellon University
Adjuct Faculty
Co-taught Fall semester User-Centered Research & Evaluation (05-410|610), a survey course of research and evaluative methodologies for both generative and evaluative research supporting product and service design. The class is a core course in the Masters, Human Computer Interaction curriculum.
August 2016
- December 2018
Pennsylvania, United States
Level.works
Co-founder
Level.Works is a marketplace designed to bring homeowners and contractors together: a safe and trustworthy place where homeowners can list their remodeling and repair jobs, and qualified and rated contractors can bid on those jobs.
November 2014
- April 2015
Pennsylvania, United States
Webkite, Inc.
Chief Experience Officer, Co-founder
I provided strategic and tactical design design leadership for product conceptualization, product design, quality assurance, and marketing. I led a team comprised of interaction and visual designers, QA leads and a marketing director.
My responsibilities included setting strategic objectives for our product; driving the interaction design of the product components through a combination of design direction and direction by fiat; creative direction for the look and feel of our product components, and final review for completeness and goal achievement prior to ship.
Typical workflows included defining product initiatives for the team, assigning resources, defining objectives for them evaluated through regular design reviews until design specifications are sufficient for engineering execution.
I was invited to participate as a founder after 7 months due to the broad and positive influence I had on the product and the company.
My responsibilities included setting strategic objectives for our product; driving the interaction design of the product components through a combination of design direction and direction by fiat; creative direction for the look and feel of our product components, and final review for completeness and goal achievement prior to ship.
Typical workflows included defining product initiatives for the team, assigning resources, defining objectives for them evaluated through regular design reviews until design specifications are sufficient for engineering execution.
I was invited to participate as a founder after 7 months due to the broad and positive influence I had on the product and the company.
December 2013
- October 2014
Pennsylvania, United States
Daedalus, Inc.
Director, Interaction Design
I designed or directed the design of interfaces and experiences for a diverse set of industrial and safety products such as scanning electron microscopes, the communication consoles for the US Air Defense centers, and bench-top scientific instruments; additionally, Daedalus also designed consumer products such as a digital music delivery system, and a touch interface for a vending kiosk system. Daedalus designed and developed software for embedded, desktop, and mobile UIs.
May 2010
- December 2013
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Apple Inc.
Lead User Interaction Designer
• Lead User Interaction Designer, Numbers for iPad
• Lead User Interaction Designer, Keynote '09, Keynote Remote 1.0.
• Lead User Interaction Designer, iWork.com, Numbers for iCloud
Designed or directed new features for iPad Numbers, the second highest grossing iPad app for 2010. Designed or directed new features for Keynote, the award-winning presentation software that ships with the iWork productivity suite. The iWork ‘09 release is Apple’s most successful iWork release to date, enjoying a 50% increase in licenses sold. Worked cross–functionally with product teams throughout Apple to ensure compatibility with Mac, iPhone and not–yet–released products. Designed Keynote Remote, an iPhone/iPod Touch companion app for remote control of Keynote presentations. Provided creative direction for visual designers, copywriters, and content designers. Conducted weekly reviews with Senior Management of comps, concepts and prototypes. Negotiated priorities of features and bugs and collaborated with senior engineers, QA, and management to shepherd implementation of designs.
• Lead User Interaction Designer, Keynote '09, Keynote Remote 1.0.
• Lead User Interaction Designer, iWork.com, Numbers for iCloud
Designed or directed new features for iPad Numbers, the second highest grossing iPad app for 2010. Designed or directed new features for Keynote, the award-winning presentation software that ships with the iWork productivity suite. The iWork ‘09 release is Apple’s most successful iWork release to date, enjoying a 50% increase in licenses sold. Worked cross–functionally with product teams throughout Apple to ensure compatibility with Mac, iPhone and not–yet–released products. Designed Keynote Remote, an iPhone/iPod Touch companion app for remote control of Keynote presentations. Provided creative direction for visual designers, copywriters, and content designers. Conducted weekly reviews with Senior Management of comps, concepts and prototypes. Negotiated priorities of features and bugs and collaborated with senior engineers, QA, and management to shepherd implementation of designs.
March 2007
- March 2010
California, United States
Apple Inc.
Senior Interaction Designer, Apple Online Store
Conducted data-based user research, developed user personas, designed and evaluated new information architecture, navigation methods, and visual design for the Online Apple Store, one of the world’s largest revenue generating and consistently top–rated ecommerce sites.
November 2005
- March 2007
California, United States
NASA Ames Research Center
Senior Research Associate
Conducted in-situ user research, designed, evaluated, and shepherded development of mission supporting software applications for Mars robotic surface operations (Mars Exploration Rovers, Phoenix Lander, and Mars Science Laboratory). Designed applications for managing the scheduling resources for JPL’s Deep Space Network. Coordinated and conducted embedded observation of the Gravity Probe B and SOFIA missions as the basis for designing an application enabling data collection, management, and mining for anomaly resolution.
January 2004
- November 2005
California, United States
Trilogy
Interaction Design Manager
Financial Business Unit :: HCI Manager :: 9/2000 – 6/2003
Managing four designers, coordinated and executed all product design activities for the business unit, provided planning and estimation for critical accounts and sales pursuits.
carOrder.com :: Principal User Interface Designer :: 3/1999 – 8/2000
Responsible for features, interaction, and look and feel for carOrder.com, PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice for online car buying (March 21, 2000). Coordinated usability evaluations and competitive product comparisons. Grew teams, and mentored developers, junior hci teammates and college interns.
Interaction Designer :: 4/1998 – 2/1999
Delivered visual and interaction design for critical Fortune 50 accounts.
Managing four designers, coordinated and executed all product design activities for the business unit, provided planning and estimation for critical accounts and sales pursuits.
carOrder.com :: Principal User Interface Designer :: 3/1999 – 8/2000
Responsible for features, interaction, and look and feel for carOrder.com, PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice for online car buying (March 21, 2000). Coordinated usability evaluations and competitive product comparisons. Grew teams, and mentored developers, junior hci teammates and college interns.
Interaction Designer :: 4/1998 – 2/1999
Delivered visual and interaction design for critical Fortune 50 accounts.
April 1998
- June 2003
Texas, United States
Education
Carnegie Mellon University
Masters of Human Computer Interaction
August 1995
- December 1997
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
University Of Pittsburgh
Master of Science, Information Science
August 1994
- June 1997
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Virginia Tech
Bachelor of Science, Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management
September 1983
- December 1990
Blacksburg, Virginia, United States
Skills
Concept Development,
Creative Direction,
Design Management,
Design Strategy,
Design Thinking,
Experience Design,
Human Computer Interaction ,
Illustrator,
Interaction Design,
IOS,
IPad,
IPhone,
Keynote ,
Mac OS X,
Mentorship,
Mobile Devices,
Participatory Design,
Photoshop,
Product Design,
Prototyping,
Recruiting,
Team Building,
Usability,
User Experience,
User Interface Design,
User-centered Design,
Visual Design,
Web Applications,
Publications & Speaking
Interaction Design in an Engineering Centric World
Thoughts on Interaction Design, Morgan Kaufmann, 2009. pp. 31-39 2009
Authors: Chris Connors
Appears in Thoughts on Interaction Design, written and edited by Jon Kolko.
Breaking the fidelity barrier: an examination of our current characterization of prototypes and an example of a mixed-fidelity success
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, pp. 1233-1242, Apr 2006,
Montreal, Quebec, CA. April 2006
Authors: Chris Connors, Michael McCurdy, Bob Kanefsky, Guy Pyrzak, Alonso Vera
Differences To Consider Between Clinical And Home Environments and How to Capitalize on Them
Plastics in Medical Devices Conference April 12, 2011 Authors: Chris Connors, Carolynn Johnson, Ph.D.
Home healthcare is an industry expanding at a dramatic rate, with both an aging demographic and the push to reduce healthcare costs conspiring to drive growth. At the same time, home healthcare capabilities continue to grow. But as medical procedures become commoditized, manufacturers are faced with a choice: serve the home healthcare market with “consumer” or “prosumer” versions of their products, or remain in a (possibly shrinking) clinical market for those products. Interaction design and design research can ease the transition for companies who chose the former...
Invited Panel Speaker at HCII, Carnegie Mellon University
November 2014
Authors: Chris Connors, Kevin Lee, Marshall Roch, Jason Cornwell
Thoughts on Interaction Design, Morgan Kaufmann, 2009. pp. 31-39 2009
Authors: Chris Connors
Appears in Thoughts on Interaction Design, written and edited by Jon Kolko.
Breaking the fidelity barrier: an examination of our current characterization of prototypes and an example of a mixed-fidelity success
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, pp. 1233-1242, Apr 2006,
Montreal, Quebec, CA. April 2006
Authors: Chris Connors, Michael McCurdy, Bob Kanefsky, Guy Pyrzak, Alonso Vera
Differences To Consider Between Clinical And Home Environments and How to Capitalize on Them
Plastics in Medical Devices Conference April 12, 2011 Authors: Chris Connors, Carolynn Johnson, Ph.D.
Home healthcare is an industry expanding at a dramatic rate, with both an aging demographic and the push to reduce healthcare costs conspiring to drive growth. At the same time, home healthcare capabilities continue to grow. But as medical procedures become commoditized, manufacturers are faced with a choice: serve the home healthcare market with “consumer” or “prosumer” versions of their products, or remain in a (possibly shrinking) clinical market for those products. Interaction design and design research can ease the transition for companies who chose the former...
Invited Panel Speaker at HCII, Carnegie Mellon University
November 2014
Authors: Chris Connors, Kevin Lee, Marshall Roch, Jason Cornwell
Apple Patents
Action representation during slide generation
Patent date Issued Mar 21, 2017 Patent issuer and number US 9,600,133
Patent description Techniques for displaying object animations on a slide are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, objects on a slide may be assigned actions when generating or editing the slide. The effects of the actions on the slide are depicted using one or more respective representations which represent the slide as it will appear after implementation of one or more corresponding actions.
Remote control of a presentation
Patent date Issued May 17, 2016 Patent issuer and number us 9,342,231
Patent description Techniques for remotely controlling a presentation application are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, a device, such as a handheld device, is linked over a network with a presentation running on a presentation application. In one embodiment, the remote control application allows the presentation to be controlled over the network by direct communication with the presentation application. In certain embodiments, the remote control application displays parts of the presentation, such as a slide being currently presented, and allows navigation of the presentation. In addition, in certain embodiments, the remote control application displays presentation notes, preview slides, or other information useful to a presenter operating the remote control application.
Action representation during slide generation
Patent date Issued Jan 8, 2013 Patent issuer and number us 8352865
Patent description "Techniques for displaying object animations on a slide are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, objects on a slide may be assigned actions when generating or editing the slide. The effects of the actions on the slide are depicted using one or more respective representations which represent the slide as it will appear after implementation of one or more corresponding actions."
Patent date Issued Mar 21, 2017 Patent issuer and number US 9,600,133
Patent description Techniques for displaying object animations on a slide are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, objects on a slide may be assigned actions when generating or editing the slide. The effects of the actions on the slide are depicted using one or more respective representations which represent the slide as it will appear after implementation of one or more corresponding actions.
Remote control of a presentation
Patent date Issued May 17, 2016 Patent issuer and number us 9,342,231
Patent description Techniques for remotely controlling a presentation application are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, a device, such as a handheld device, is linked over a network with a presentation running on a presentation application. In one embodiment, the remote control application allows the presentation to be controlled over the network by direct communication with the presentation application. In certain embodiments, the remote control application displays parts of the presentation, such as a slide being currently presented, and allows navigation of the presentation. In addition, in certain embodiments, the remote control application displays presentation notes, preview slides, or other information useful to a presenter operating the remote control application.
Action representation during slide generation
Patent date Issued Jan 8, 2013 Patent issuer and number us 8352865
Patent description "Techniques for displaying object animations on a slide are disclosed. In accordance with these techniques, objects on a slide may be assigned actions when generating or editing the slide. The effects of the actions on the slide are depicted using one or more respective representations which represent the slide as it will appear after implementation of one or more corresponding actions."
Trilogy Patents
Method and apparatus for sorting products by features
Patent date Issued Sep 16, 2008 Patent issuer and number us 7,426,481
Patent description A computer system provides product selections to a user according to a needs analysis. A database stores pre-generated product configurations and product configuration information. The product configuration information includes product features and product rules governing allowable combinations of the product features. Received product related data can include different types of information such as attribute information and product identifier information. The received product related data is processed to determine the type of received information. If the type is attribute information, the received product related data is filtered in accordance with the product configuration information and one or more product configurations that meet requirements of the received attribute information is identified. If the type is product identifier information, one or more of the pre-generated product configurations that corresponds to the received product related data is identified. Each identified product configuration and each identified pre-generated product configuration is provided to the user.
Method and apparatus for product comparison
Patent date Issued Oct 31, 2006 Patent issuer and number us 7,130,821
Patent description A method of comparing products is disclosed. The method includes selecting a first configuration representing a first product with a first attribute, selecting a second configuration representing a second product with a second attribute, and displaying the first attribute and the second attribute. As will be noted, the first attribute is defined in the first configuration, and the second attribute is defined in the second configuration.
Patent date Issued Sep 16, 2008 Patent issuer and number us 7,426,481
Patent description A computer system provides product selections to a user according to a needs analysis. A database stores pre-generated product configurations and product configuration information. The product configuration information includes product features and product rules governing allowable combinations of the product features. Received product related data can include different types of information such as attribute information and product identifier information. The received product related data is processed to determine the type of received information. If the type is attribute information, the received product related data is filtered in accordance with the product configuration information and one or more product configurations that meet requirements of the received attribute information is identified. If the type is product identifier information, one or more of the pre-generated product configurations that corresponds to the received product related data is identified. Each identified product configuration and each identified pre-generated product configuration is provided to the user.
Method and apparatus for product comparison
Patent date Issued Oct 31, 2006 Patent issuer and number us 7,130,821
Patent description A method of comparing products is disclosed. The method includes selecting a first configuration representing a first product with a first attribute, selecting a second configuration representing a second product with a second attribute, and displaying the first attribute and the second attribute. As will be noted, the first attribute is defined in the first configuration, and the second attribute is defined in the second configuration.