Etan is a Senior User Experience Engineer at EchoUser. Etan is an innovative, experienced and passionate interaction designer, software developer, and project leader, with particular expertise in enterprise-level web-based applications and user interface design.

Career

• Usability & Design: Effective software solutions require up front user centered design. Whenever possible, Etan has included usability testing as a tool to help design and revise user interfaces throughout his projects as a technical lead at Concordia University, and now as a usability engineer at EchoUser. In addition to testing, Etan builds interface mock-ups and functional prototypes to work through concepts, as well as communicate design ideas to stakeholders and team members. Etan continuously keeps abreast of emerging rich UI technologies such as AJAX, dynamic html/javascript, and Adobe Flex in order to stay on the "cutting edge" of user experience.
• Project Lead and Software Developer: Formally educated as a software engineer, Etan has extensive experience developing large-scale web-based applications. Using agile principles, object-oriented methodologies, and technologies such as J2EE, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and web frameworks, Etan has successfully developed and maintained applications at Concordia and now EchoUser. These are just a few examples:
  • Provotrack, a custom web-based document management system for tracking curriculum changes between all faculty representatives.
  • Roombook, a room booking application used by the entire university for classroom and conference room booking and tracking for special activities/groups.
  • A locker rental system integrated into the student portal.
  • EchoUser usability suite (in progress), a web-based end-to-end usability study tracking and analysis suite.
• Business & Systems Analysis: A solid understanding of business processes is key when solving business issues through software solutions. Etan successfully and innovatively applies technical solutions to business needs by carefully mapping and re-engineering a business process before engaging in a software solution. This analysis, combined with user centered design, provides a foundation from which to build many of the software projects Etan has headed at Concordia University, and now EchoUser.
• FreakJob.com: Etan partnered with Jonathan Karpfen and acted as CTO during the design and implementation of a unique business idea. FreakJob.com, a community driven web-based environment where posted jobs can be ranked and published to the front page by the site users themselves, promised to be a viable alternative to traditional web-based job sites. Etan played a key role in formulating FreakJob’s business strategy, as well as design and development of the underlying software.

Other Creative Works

• Presentation at the MoodleMoot 2007 conference of usability and design issues and solutions for Moodle.
• McGill Management Achievement awards website. A yearly event at McGill University which honors entrepreneurs.
• EchoUser website.
• FreakJob.com blog (Generated traffic and interest in FreakJob).
• Conceptual websites for upcoming comedian Stephen Violich.