ANDREW V. SPINA

SUMMARY

More than fifteen years of designing large and small scale software and web products ranging from ninety-nine cent iPhone apps to multi-million dollar e-commerce suites. Extensive experience communicating the vision and intent of the user experience to all levels and disciplines in the organization, negotiating conflicts, and building consensus while always acting as a strong advocate for the user. Highly tolerant of ambiguity and capable of crafting order out of chaos.

EXPERIENCE

Director of Customer Experience - Scholastic Inc., New York, NY
June 2008 – Present

• Lead a team of user experience designers and technologists that included interaction design, content strategy, information architecture, and usability capabilities. Directed both internal processes and priorities as well as shaped vendor activities.
• Worked closely with project management, development, marketing and business units to ensure project's business, quality, cost, and schedule goals were met while insuring cohesive customer experience.
• Advised business owners who govern the website on the priorities they should be addressing to improve the customer satisfaction and business efficacy of the site from a user experience point of view.

Lead Interaction Designer / Design Manager - Scholastic Inc., New York, NY
October 2004 – June 2008

• Designed social networks, subscription services, content templates, e-commerce sites.
• Hired, managed and mentored Interaction Designers and freelance visual designers.
• Worked closely with outside vendors to craft the Webby award winning redesign of Scholastic.com.
• Created the UI Workshops Series to educate and evangelize best practices and emergent trends.

Interaction Designer November - Scholastic Inc., New York, NY
2002 - October 2004

• Designed registration systems, web applications, content mini-sites, search tools.
• Established the documentation standards and templates for UX deliverables for the organization.

Information Architect - LearnTech, New York, NY
October 2000 - September 2001

• Established, documented, maintained and revised functional specifications. Developed and documented product function and structure through wire-frames, use flow charts, use cases, site maps and screen diagrams. Translated functional requirements into effective and usable designs.
• Designed and built HTML and Flash mock-ups and was a hands-on manager for the team of developers and artists that produced the final prototypes.
• Initiated and managed creative brainstorming meetings. Lead design workshops and presentations with clients and was in constant contact with the production team and off-shore engineering group.
  

  Clients included: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Kaplan Inc., Scholastic Inc., Cultura Inglesa/Sao Paulo, Grupo Editorial Norma, ClickRadio Inc., Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing.

Producer - LTI/Voyager, New York, NY
January 1998 - October 2000

• Maintained project budget, timelines and deliverables through project completion. Scheduled resource allocation. Coordinated quality assurance.
• Successfully managed production team of artists, associate producers and off-shore engineers.
  
• Produced additional graphics and interface designs as needed. Tracked asset production (over 50,000 multi-media assets for one project alone).
  
  Clients included: American Social History Project Inc., Scholastic Inc., Ravensburger Interactive GmbH.
  

Web Developer - Freelance
September 1997 - Present

• Define content structure, design user interface and produce art assets including file optimization. Hand code HTML and JavaScript.
• Combined disparate sites for New York University's School of Education into a single unified site using a common information structure.

Software Engineer - Inficon, Syracuse, NY
October 1994 - August 1997

• Wrote system firmware in C, DSP firmware in Assembler and the data collection application in Visual Basic.
• Authored technical user manual and built on-line help using RoboHelp.
  
• Installed and tested product at primary client's beta site in Aachen, Germany.

QA / Software Tester - Inficon, Syracuse, NY
September 1993 - October 1994

• Led a six member QA group responsible for testing a large-scale Windows application.
  
• Drafted test plans and automated test scripts.
  
• Maintained database of over two thousand problem reports collected from testers and beta-sites and generated reports for the software development team.

EDUCATION

APPLICATIONS & LANGUAGES

HTML, Java Script, Flash, Photoshop, Fireworks, DreamWeaver, Debabelizer
Visio, MS Project, MS Office (Word, Excel, Access)
C, Visual Basic, JavaScript, Assembler, C++, Lisp