Experience
Principal Product Designer (Salesforce Web3)
Salesforce | Jan 2022 — Present
- Drive design for Salesforce's Web3 CRM platform leveraging the existing Salesforce Cloud ecosystem
- Provide tools and strategies for customers to create and manage virtual goods, merge their Web2 and Web3 data for marketing and support, and empower engagement & community-building
Principal Product Designer (Core Platform & Low-Code Tools)
Salesforce | Mar 2021 — Jan 2022
- Evolve and enhance low-code tools for Salesforce and Slack admins
- Based on community input and research, own and augment Core Lists & Records
Principal Product Designer (Find a Doctor)
Blue Shield of CA | Dec 2019 — Feb 2021
- For users choosing healthcare options ("Find a Doctor"), enhance their experiences by analyzing and modifying user flows
- Spearhead design team processes, including gap analysis to define best practices while guiding design system evolution and adoption efforts
Lead Product Designer (Display AR)
Ubiquity6 | Dec 2018 — Jul 2019
- Reimagine our augmented reality mobile app using user flow analysis, personas, wireframes, and prototypes
- Led design systems creation, usage guidelines, design thinking training, and design handoff procedures
Principal Product Designer (BIM 360 Design Collaboration)
Autodesk | Mar 2016 — Nov 2018
- Develop the UX strategy, principles, and guidelines for the BIM 360 Design module
Principal Product Designer (Infraworks)
Autodesk | Nov 2013 — Feb 2016
- Based on customer research data, I drove the long-term vision for InfraWork's terrain-shaping solutions
Design Lead & Manager (zSpace)
zSpace | Jun 2010 — Sep 2013
- Led UX strategy for our virtual reality demo, generating >$60M of VC investment
- Direct design and conduct usability studies on zSpace's VR-powered Maya plugin
- Provide vision and lead design on the zSpace VR design system
Experience Designer (Virtual Land in Second Life)
Linden Research | Dec 2007 — Dec 2009
- UX Lead for virtual land (80% of revenue), content controls, rich media, and notifications
- Spearhead "Find and Discover" strategic initiative to increase MAU and user retention
Senior Experience Designer (QuickBooks)
Intuit | Sep 2006 — Nov 2007
- Develop UX design patterns for Quickbooks' multicurrency effort
- Own design guidelines for next-gen Quickbooks
Experience Lead & Manager (Java SE)
Sun Microsystems | Oct 1995 — Sep 2006
- Led design for Java's UI Toolkits (Swing, JLF, AWT, I18N, A11Y)
- Co-author of the Java Look & Feel Design Guidelines
- Spearhead design for NetBeans' GUI builder (Matisse), the Java Plugin, Java Web Start, and the JCK
Intern (SunSoft UI Design)
Sun Microsystems | Jun 1994 — Sep 1994
- Enhance Mosaic, the 1st popular Web browser, with auditory cues for enhanced user feedback
Education
M.S. ABD (Industrial and Systems Engineering)
Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA
- Researched and prototyped the addition of auditory cues for monitoring & fault detection in NASA's next-gen satellite control software
B.S. (Cognitive Science)
University of California, San Diego | La Jolla, CA
- Research member of Don Norman's Cognitive Engineering & Distributed Cognition Lab
Certifications
Salesforce Certified User Experience Designer
Salesforce | Aug 2022
- Certified UX Designers build and deploy UX design concepts on the Salesforce Platform
The Ultimate Guide to Game Development with Unity
Udemy (Unity Technologies & J. Weinberger) | Jul 2018 | Certificate
- Authorized by and developed with Unity Technologies, this course teaches C# programming in the Unity Engine to create 2d and 3d experiences
Selected Publications
Albers, M. C. (2019). "Sketch Best Practices for Professional Design Teams". Medium (Design + Sketch). Sketch Team endorsement.
Albers, M. C. (2018). "Simple Low-Fidelity VR Prototyping: Practical How-To Advice". Medium (Prototypr.io).
Kamba, T., Bharat, K., & Albers, M. C. (1995). "The Krakatoa Chronicle: An Interactive, Personalized Newspaper on the Web". World Wide Web Journal, 1(1) Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & W3C.
Albers, M. C. & Bergman, E. (1995). "The Audible Web: Auditory Enhancements for Mosaic". In Proceedings of CHI'95 - The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Conference Companion (pp. 318-319). Denver, CO: ACM.
Albers, M. C. (1994). "Auditory Cues for Complex, Supervisory Control Systems: Aiding Fault Detection and Isolation in Satellite-Ground Control". For CHI'94 Workshop on The Future of Audio and Speech in the Interface. Boston, MA: ACM.
Albers, M. C. (1993). "Sonification and Auditory Icons in a Complex, Supervisory Control Environment". For SIGGRAPH/Multimedia `93 Workshop on Sound-Related Computation. Los Angeles, CA: ACM.
Patents
"Three button stylus", US D719,162, December 2014
"Cross-platform audio feedback for GUI components", US 6,853,868, February 2005
"Graphical user interface layout customizer", US 6,738,079, May 2004
"Keyboard navigation of non-focusable components", US 6,654,038, November 2003
"Presentation of link information as an aid to hypermedia navigation", US 6,560,605, May 2003
"Method and apparatus maintaining a to-be-visited site bookmark file", US 6,411,996, June 2002
"Auditory cues for notification of device activity", US 6,400,275, June 2002
"Presentation of link information as an aid to hypermedia navigation", US 6,223,188, April 2001