Our team
Our strength comes from our considerable experience working with leading commercial and public sector organisations, and the highly complementary skills of the individual team members.
Our core consultants are:
Chris Rourke, Managing Director & Founder
Chris has over 17 years commercial experience in usability, accessibility, human factors consultancy and training. Chris has worked with a range of clients including Hewlett Packard, Dell Computers, NCR, Houses of Parliament, Emirates Airlines, IKEA and many other commercial and public sector clients in the UK and abroad. His particular user experience interests include web accessibility, the application of Rich Internet Applications such as AJAX and Flex, remote usability testing, eye tracking and persuasion architecture.
Chris is Founder and President of the Scottish Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association and is a member of various professional organisations, including the British Human-Computer Interaction Group (BHCIG), and the Computers and Human Interaction Group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-SIGCHI).
Chris holds a BSc. in Engineering Psychology from Tufts University and a MSc. in Ergonomics from the University of Michigan.
In his spare time Chris enjoys travel and sport, particularly ultimate Frisbee.
Emma Kirk, Strategic Director
Emma has over 10 years experience in Strategic Marketing and Internet fields. Her career spans a wealth of blue chip organisations predominantly in the financial services sector. She also has digital agency experience having established the digital service for Scotland's largest direct marketing agency.
Emma brings a strategic yet common-sense approach to User Vision, making usability an understandable and jargon-free experience for our clients. She holds a BA (Hons.) Business Studies with Marketing and the CIM Diploma in Marketing.
Emma loves nothing more than to “bag a few Munros” in her time off – a great way to unwind (unless it's raining).
Ross Philip, Senior Usability Consultant
Ross has 6 years experience in the commercial application of user-centred design methods in software and web development. Since joining User Vision in 2002, Ross has worked on a large number of high profile usability and accessibility projects for many of User Vision's clients.
As an executive member of the BHCIG, he has recently been appointed as their representative member of the British Standards Institute (BSI) committee on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) where he was most recently involved in the review of the committee draft of ISO 23973 – "Software ergonomics for Worldwide Web user interfaces". He has also previously been involved with the development of an international accreditation scheme for usability professionals and is a member of the UPA and the Scottish Usability Forum. Ross holds a MSc. (distinction) in Information Systems from Napier University.
His career includes posts as medical researcher, financial consultant, direct marketer and professional musician prior to switching to Information Technology and the specialist field of usability.
He has his hands full with his three young children, and still occasionally plays bass in his band.
Mark Westwater, Senior Usability Consultant
Mark is qualified with a BSc. (Hons.) in Applied Biological Sciences from Napier University in Edinburgh, an MSc. (Eng.) in Work Design and Ergonomics at the University of Birmingham and is currently studying for an MBA.
Mark has over 11 years experience applying User Centred Design (UCD) methodologies to product developments. Prior to joining User Vision Mark worked for NCR, the world leader in Automated Teller Machines (ATM) Research and Development. His primary focus was to plan and support both hardware and software developments as well as conducting research in future technologies. This included mobile based application design and Voice Recognition system evaluation. Mark was also responsible for developing and implementing a UCD process into the engineering organisation. Mark has extensive experience in the field of accessibility and has been a representative on various accessibility committees in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, developing standards that meet both the consumers’ needs and current technology trends.
He has been a Registered Member of the Ergonomics Society for the last 11 years and is currently the membership secretary of the Scottish Ergonomics Forum. Mark is also a Member of the Usability Professional’s Association. He has published a number of research papers and has several filed patents in both the security and accessibility fields. In 2001 Mark won the ‘Eureka’ award for innovation.
Mark is a music enthusiast who also plays golf regularly and was a county team member.
Donna Douglas, Usability Consultant
Donna moved into information architecture from an interaction design discipline to promote holistic user experiences to corporate clients. Donna has over 8 years of design, technical, and strategic experience in the technology industry having worked with clients including the BBC.
Continually reviewing the latest technologies, Donna advises on the design of, application and site designs for mobile and web applications, with a keen interest in social networking, and collaboration software. Donna's interests also extend to accessible design solutions and eye tracking analysis. She is an advocate of user experience approaches to projects with a desire to ensure that the experience of the device fits the overall product strategy, industry standards and the user's requirements.
Donna is a member of the Scottish Usability Forum, the Usability Professionals' Association and the British Computer Society (BCS) and holds and MSc. in Information Technology with a focus on instructional design from Napier University.
When in Edinburgh, Donna enjoys practicing yoga and during the weekend, Donna enjoys the Scottish mountains although when the midges are particularly bad, she enjoys travelling abroad to higher altitudes.
David Hamill, Usability Consultant
David's involvement with the web began in 1999, when he and a friend established a popular golf website for the Edinburgh area. He soon went on to freelance in web-design and intranet communications before accepting a permanent role with one of the UK's largest banks, Royal Bank of Scotland in 2003. In his role there he specialised in usability while working on the corporate intranet.
David joined User Vision in March 2007, and has already contributed to a number of projects for our commercial and public sector clients, focusing on web usability and accessibility.
Surprisingly given his history, David doesn't play golf. In his own words he is "rubbish". Instead, he spends most of his spare time mountain biking in various parts of Scotland and occasionally even abroad.
Mark Palmer, Accessibility Consultant
Mark has 12 years experience in the IT Industry, 6 of which were spent heading the user interface team at Intelligent Finance. In his role as Senior Analyst Programmer, Mark headed up numerous projects, ensuring that accessibility standards were maintained from the projects inception through to the delivered product.
A passionate advocate for accessibility and web standards, Mark brings a wealth of accessibility experience to User Vision. He is a strong believer that the web can be accessible and user friendly without sacrificing style.
Mark is a huge music fan, usually listening to bands which other people have never heard of.
Jamie Sands, Usability Consultant
Jamie qualified in 1999 with a BSc. (Hons.) in Psychology from Edinburgh University and completed his PhD. in ‘Usability of Stereoscopic Augmented Reality’ from the School of Computing at Napier University in 2007.
Jamie has also spent 2 years working within the Advanced Technology and Research department of NCR, the world leader in Automated Teller Machines (ATM) development, as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Napier University and NCR, Dundee. This challenging assignment encompassed the full project life-cycle, from initial project space investigation, through user testing and prototype development. This work included the development of the largest multi-national investigation of user opinions on banking behavior and personalization.
Jamie also has an interest in music and film, on both sides of the camera. In particular he has an interest in 8mm short film competitions, in which his first three entries have been accepted and premiered in various London screenings.
Lorraine Paterson, Usability Consultant
In 2005 Lorraine completed a BA (Hons.) in Painting at Edinburgh College of Art and recently graduated from Napier University with an MSc. with distinction in Multimedia and Interactive Systems. Since graduating, she has completed a paid research internship which was offered to her as a result of her Masters dissertation. The internship focused on the use of online logs (blogs) and student learning. The work produced at the end of the internship contributed to a larger project being undertaken in Finland and is likely to be published in an academic journal once the project is complete.
Since her internship, Lorraine continued to work for Napier University as an e-learning developer with The School Of Life Sciences Collaborative e-Learning for Life Sciences (CeLLS) project. The aim of the project was to produce online learning materials for undergraduate students across Scotland. Lorraine was involved in the production of interactive tasks and tested the usability of interactive animations created by fellow developers by following a set of usability requirements. The majority of this work was produced using Macromedia Flash software.
Lorraine still has a great interest in art and enjoys drawing and painting in her spare time.
Laura Fealy, Marketing Assistant
Laura joins User Vision as a recent marketing graduate from Stirling University. Laura gained valuable market research experience during a University placement. Over the course of 5 months Laura worked on behalf of a well known recruitment agency, developing a piece of research on graduates’ attitude to the work place. Laura was responsible for the design, implementation and analysis of the data which was used to develop the company’s long term graduate strategy.
Laura has a great deal of experience in customer service and utilises this in client liaison and hostessing of the viewing facilities. Laura is also responsible for a variety of marketing activities as well as some of the office administration.
Laura spends most of her spare time trying to perfect her swing and dispel the myth that young women can’t play golf.
Press enquiries
Our PR contact is Sarah Lee at Hot Tin Roof. For further information on User Vision contact Sarah on Tel: 0131 225 3875 or email: sarah@hottinroof.co.uk