Resume and Biography for Jamie Kravitz

Resume and Biography for Jamie Kravitz

My current resume is available for download as a PDF file [364k].

Biography

Current Career Objective - to combine my human factors and interaction design training with my experience as an award-winning filmmaker to design interfaces and user experiences for multimedia software or hardware that delight, inspire, and foster creativity.

Narrative - Jamie Kravitz has been at the convergence of creativity and technology throughout his career, from his work in film and video production to digital media training and production to his current work in interface design.

Part One of his professional career starts in his capacity as the Public Access Coordinator for the City of West Hollywood. As founder of the city's public cable TV program, Jamie brought his video production skills and leadership abilities to bear in designing the program's entire administration and training program. An enthusiastic adapter to new technologies while working within the budget constraints of community television, Jamie managed to bring nonlinear editing to the City's program, while continuing to support analog technology.

Seeing that the future was digital, Jamie proactively educated himself at Santa Monica's Academy of Entertainment and Technology to learn the tools of digital media production as well as motion graphics and compositing. He was able to put these skills to use in his work for GSociety, a web-based entertainment company. In the days before YouTube, Jamie was producing streaming media programming for the company's main websites.

Jamie worked for several years as an independent video producer, with clients including City of West Hollywood, City of Santa Monica, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus. One of the projects from this time was his award-winning documentary Into the Streets, which has been shown in film festivals across America and in Mexico City. During this time he also worked as an Educational Technologist for Long Beach City College, where he helped transition the Instructional Technology department from CD-based interactive trainings to web-based materials using Flash, PHP, and MySQL. He was the lead Flash and web developer for the award-winning Dare To Care faculty training about sensitivity to students with disabilities.

Part Two of of his professional career began by going back to graduate school to obtain a Master of Science degree in Human Factors and Ergonomics. Having done a fair amount of web design and development, Jamie was increasingly interested in the science behind the interfaces we use and interact with in our everday lives. The masters program at San Jose State University provided an opportunity to get both a broad exposure to the field, including human performance and ergonomics, while being able to focus on Human-Computer Interaction and take advantage of the many opportunities available in Silicon Valley.

He worked at NASA Ames Research Facility as a research assistant, contributing to the NASA STD-3000 Human Space Integration Standard document, and then as a Usability Engineer for Interface Analysis Associates, a consulting firm in Cupertino. There he participated in many usability studies of products, software, and web applications, as well as working on designs for complex scientific software, medical products, and some mobile products.

Currently a User Experience Architect at Franklin Templeton Investments, Jamie regularly works on designs for the company's various websites, intranets, and enterprise applications, and is the lead UX Architect on the redesign of the main retail website. He creates wireframes, task flows, and site maps, champions the user centered design process, and conducts user research in the form of interviews and usability testing.