Heather McIntosh Cassano

I have been working in the area of User Experience and Product Design for over twenty years. Prior to joining Pearson, I served as the Senior Director of User Experience for Yahoo! running a large, global design team which was responsible for the design of all Advertising, Publishing and Consumer Ad products across Yahoo!. Previous to that I was a Staff User Experience Designer at Google leading design efforts for social networking and client service UIs. Over the past twenty years, I've worked at Symantec - leading teams who designed both consumer UIs (aka the “Norton” Products) and enterprise UIs (Symantec Client Security), Digitas, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Acacia Design, Inc. I've designed and implemented user interfaces in many different industries and vertical markets including advertising, financial, health care, developer tools, enterprise, devices, social & entertainment, retail, automotive. For fifteen years I held university appointments at Harvard and UCLA, teaching “Practical User Interface Design" and "Introduction to Human Computer Interaction.” During the past year, I've taught remedial reading and writing at Berkeley College in New York City. In addition to teaching courses, I was a member of the committee charged with putting together a Human Computer Interaction minor in the Psychology Dept at UCLA. I’ve provided services as an expert UI witness in a federal copyright infringement case (CATC vs. Catalyst, 2002-2003). I'm also the Primary Inventor for three UI-related Patents, at Sun Microsystems, Symantec and at Yahoo! Lastly, I've served as co-chair of LA-CHI (the LA chapter of SIG-CHI) which involves building a User Experience community in Los Angeles, hosting meetings, recruiting guest speakers, etc. I received a B.A. in computer science from Boston College, and a Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College, Vermont. On the personal front, I live in Rhinebeck, NY with my husband and five children, ages 8-15. My hobbies include creative writing and pilates.

Website: www.heathercassano.com