kaari's resume

Kaari Peterson
615 Palo Alto Ave.
Mountain View, CA 94041-1825
650.961.3330
kaari@mac.com

SUMMARY

Creative leader with a strong user experience background and consistent record of
progressive accomplishments in both software and web products. Possesses the keen
ability to evaluate projects from a very high level in order to better identify new opportunities
as well as recognize possible stumbling blocks. Extensive experience in building
new teams and meeting aggressive deadlines.

OBJECTIVE

A User Experience Design leadership role that utilizes my problem solving skills and
ability to create and execute a design/product vision.

EMPLOYMENT

Adobe Systems, Inc. • 2005 - 2006

Director, User Experience

Directed front-end user experience including design direction for the Yahoo! Personals
property (online dating site). Managed group of Interaction and Visual Designers and
led concept development and design ideation within a user-centered design process.

• Worked closely with Personals Product Managers, Marketing Group and Engineering
to design new feature requirements.
• Developed comprehensive new look and feel for the site and created new Design
Direction document.
• Led design of updated Content area of Y!P based on a new backend content management
system.
• Partnered with User Research and Marketing to gather user feedback regarding the
site, analyzed usability results and delivered feature recommendations.
• Translated design problems into scalable design solutions.
• Led design of updated Search Results Page and Signed In Home Page.

Adobe Systems, Inc. • 2005 - 2006

Senior Interface Designer
Drove interaction and interface design for new release of Adobe Version Cue, which is Adobe's version tracking
solution for Creative Professionals and is included in the Adobe Creative Suite.

• Worked closely with Product Management, User Research and Adobe customers to define feature
requirements.
• Identified solution for interaction design with three leading Digital Asset Management systems.
• Completed design development for three major feature areas in fewer than five iterations
• Worked in partnership with User Research to test the product, analyze usability results and deliver
feature redesigns to the product team.
• Ran two major rounds of user testing with User Research specialist and incorporated results of tests
into redesign in a period of three months.

Adobe Systems, Inc. • 2000- 2005

Interface Design Manager
Managed multidisciplinary team in the Acrobat Product Family segmentation, conception, design and delivery of
Acrobat 6.0 and 7.0. Responsible for delivering overall vision, staffing and planning to meet development
delivery milestones.

• Delivered on schedule a UI segmentation model to match the new business direction.
• Doubled my team’s product focus from two products to four.
• Instituted a collaborative design process enabling a diverse team to deliver on a new-to-Adobe
framework (task based); no other Adobe product used this framework.
• Delivered new UI design model that eliminated the number one Acrobat technical support issue.
• Enabled Reader to establish its own unique brand identity via the UI design.
• Completely addressed all product family deliverables including incorporating UI guidelines in the Acrobat SDK.
• Worked with large Beta team (over 500 members).
• Planned, executed and managed group budget with 2% of target.
• Surpassed CEO’s expectation for usability and design for Acrobat 6.
• Won ten major software awards (Acrobat 6) including PC Magazine’s “Best of the Year” and CNET’s

GO.com • 2000
Disney Internet Group

Web Designer and Information Architect
Worked with team from Razorfish Design on overall new corporate branding/design for
GO.com site.

• Iterated on concept of new palette-based design for displaying GO.com content.
• Tested new site color palettes with users.
• Collaborated with Web Content Producers to design new content areas.
• Delivered functional speci? cations and html templates to engineering group.

TCT Technical Training, Inc. • 1994 - 2000

Marketing Creative Services Manager

Key contributor in a technical training company that produced web delivered training
courses and CD-ROMs for its customers.

• Responsible for creative direction and marketing of product including product catalog
and corporate website.
• Designed user interface and global navigation for web and CD-ROM/web-delivered
courseware.
• Led the design, development and editorial management of the corporate web site.
• Created collateral materials for sales department.
• Managed members of the Marketing Creative Services Department.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science with Distinction San Jose Sate University, Double Major Graphic Design
and Photography

Bachelor of Arts Michigan State University, Advertising Major, Fine Art Minor

AWARDS / PAPERS

• She’s Geeky Conference 2007 - Presented “Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About User Experience Design
• CHI Vienna - (click link for PDF) Presented From Tools to Tasks - Discoverability and Acrobat 6
• Scholarship Recipient San Jose State University Dept. of Art and Design Women's Alumni Scholarship
• Second Place National Poster Design Competition "Envision 17"
• Golden Key National Honors Society
• Phi Kappa Phi National Honors Fraternity

TALENTS / SKILLS
• Good collaborator.
• Adept at planning and leading team building exercises and events.
• Led courses for Adobe designers about presentation of design work.
• Presented at Adobe’s annual Technical Summit (2002, 2004).
• Presented at PDF Conference (2002).
• Macintosh and Windows Proficient.
• Applications expertise: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign,
Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, Omnigraffle, Apple iPhoto,
Apple iMovie, Apple iDVD, and Apple iTunes.