Senior UX Specialist at Elsevier

As of 1st of October I am no longer employed at Reed Business. Instead I am Senior Usability Specialist at Elsevier. So instead of working with products for the Dutch market I am now working on global products for scientists and research administrators.

It felt like a fairly good time to take on something new. Together with my colleague I had succeeded in making UX a part of the business, which was the reason I was hired and I was finishing up the two projects I was working on and felt that I was ready to take on new challenges. The last thing I heard was that UX would be it's own department and exist on the same level as marketing (with much less staff, unfortunately). So in less than two years time we made UX an integral part of the business, of which I am quite proud.

This far working at Elsevier has been really great! Not that I did not like my old job (quite the opposite) but I feel a closer affinity to the business now. After all, working with law enforcement, lawyers and procurement officers is not quite the same as working with products for scientists and being part of a team of 40+ people from Chennai in India to Dayton, Ohio is a great way to grow professionally. A big plus is that I can discuss things like test plans and interaction designs with more experienced colleagues and learn from their mistakes and learn new things.

In terms of my Dutch skills I hope they won't suffer to much. Even though the business language has switched to English much to of the day to day activities are still in Dutch.

Some shameless bragging - Stapel & De Koning the movie is live!

Since I started working at Reed Business I have been working on a rich information site for the Dutch police - Stapel & De Koning.

The marketing team put together a short commercial about the product which went live today. Right now it is only in Dutch but I plan to upload a verison with subtitles in English as well.