Timothy D. Lawrence

Tym Lawrence's goal is to excel in the design, delivery and management of compelling online products & solutions.

Education: With Bachelor degrees in both Law and Science (UNSW Sydney) and an ongoing Masters of Business Administration in eBusiness (UTS, Sydney), Tym is a skilled professional who is passionate about in delivering innovative and highly usable online products.

Experience: Having worked in the Internet-related industries for over a decade at companies such as Vignette and Telstra, Tym demonstrates extensive understanding of users and a track record of addressing their needs though innovative solutions. Working closely with engineering, Tym has proven experience in developing compelling and highly usable products to meet market needs.

Skills: Innovative lateral thinking and problem solving talents enhance a broad set of practical skills relevant to initiation and delivery of Internet products - including requirements gathering & scoping, solution definition and user centred design. In addition, Tym has well developed process, prioritization & scheduling abilities that are critical to managing the product development.

Approach: Able to focus both strategically and operationally, Tym demonstrates exceptional organizational skills and the ability to build effective working relationships between users, customer service, designers, engineers, marketing and management.

University & High School

2004 -  Master of Business Administration (MBA) in eBusiness Major UTS, Sydney

Commenced March 2002. Distinction average

1992 – 1999 Bachelor of Laws & Bachelor of Science [Genetics] (LLB BSC). University of NSW, Kensington.

Focus on Internet, international trade, I.T. & telecommunications, intellectual property, health & medicine, genetics, biological computing.

• High credit to distinction average. Transcript available.
• Extra curricular activities included: orientation leader, law revue producer, elected representative to the UNSW Board of Studies.
• 1996 student exchange with the University of British Columbia, B.C. Canada.

1983 – 1990Higher School Certificate. Knox Grammar School, Wahroonga

• HSC TER: 99.70 out of 100.
• Ranked equal 160^th in NSW, equal 3rd in 3 Unit Mathematics and 8th in Computer Studies.
• Prizes: Computer Studies, Industrial Arts and Honours.

Vocational Training

2006 Usability in Practice: Three Day Intensive Camp. Norman Nielsen Group

Practical skills for developing and executive usability testing. Included recruiting participants, conducting hands-on testing with real users, and turning findings into action items for the design team

2006 Vignette Portal Foundation. Vignette Corporation

Covering the key features, functionality, and capabilities of Vignette Portal.

2000 Web Design Process & Techniques. The Hiser Group

An introduction to Hiser Processes and the Hiser Toolkit in order to support the use of this material within Telstra.

1999 Workplace Category One Trainer. Eastern Suburbs Evening College

Accredited course covered preparation, delivery & evaluation of training.

Feb 05 – currentUser Experience Engineer for Vignette Corporation

Reporting to the Head of Engineering, I manage all user experience activities for the Australian office of this US-based software company. Responsible for the interface design and overall use experience of Vignette's Australian enterprise products, my achievements include:

• Worked with Product Management to identify opportunities to for product enhancements to meet existing or anticipated market needs and user requirements. This includes co-authoring of product specifications in Product Requirements Documents
• Developed new user interface concepts for new products and create accurate and well-defined mock-ups and/or UI prototypes for new-feature additions to existing products
• Work within engineering teams to determine optimum technical implementation methods within set schedules.  
• Work with cross-functional teams including representatives of sales, customer support, product management and marketing o gather user feedback.
• Created and maintained libraries of commonly-used UI resources.
• Promoted good UE practices  through all phases of the development process and participate in the process of defining generic cross-product UI standards
• Established User Experience Improvement Program to carry out onsite visits and run usability sessions with selected users to establish deficiencies.

May 02 - Feb 05Product Manager for eB squared.

Reporting to the CEO, my primary goal was to deliver innovative real time eCommerce solutions to customers and decision makers. I was responsible for:

• Product Development & Management including the initiation of new eCommerce products and product enhancements of applications delivered over the EFTPOS network & the Internet.
• Distribution of Business Solutions over the online networks and through integration with third party companies such as financial institutions – such as acquiring banks – and also with point of sale and EFTPOS technology vendors.
• Management of eCommerce products in order to deliver highly usable state-of-the-art online applications to internal and external clients.

Jul 01 – Mar 02General Manager for Noggin Advertising.                                                     

As the General Manager of the web development section of this boutique advertising agency, I was responsible for a dozen staff and sub-contractors. Reporting directly to the CEO my achievements included:

• Management of all IT developers and office issues for IT group, including budgets, monthly cash flow, technology investments and other outgoings.
• Establishment of  short and long term product goals and strategies including defining the value propositions, establishing business & pricing models, and liaising with strategic partners.
• The development of new business as well as proposal creation, quoting, contract negotiations and signing.
• Production / PM of jobs such as Jets Swimwear (jets.net.au) and a new site for the Faculty of Economics & Business at the University of Sydney at (www.econ.usyd.edu.au) that utilised Linux, PHP and MySQL.

Jan 01  - Jun 01 Web Process Consultant for Asia Online 

Reporting to the director of web services I worked with the Processes and System team to deliver an end-to-end business process that was iterative, scalable and cost effective. This was achieved by:

• Gathering input and requirements from stakeholders across Australia and Asia Pacific
• Reviewing existing web development processes using technologies such as ASP, Cold Fusion and SQL
• Injecting User Centered Design processes, such as the Hiser Toolkit, Rational Unified Process and Unified Modeling Language (UML), Niku, Prince2 and the ISO 13407: Human Centred design processes for Interactive Systems standard.
• Working with the Asia Online’s consulting, definition and delivery teams to implement the new processes in an expandable online system.

Jun 00 – Jan 01 Project Manager / Information Architect for Telstra

I was responsible for a number of special projects in the Design and Standards Hub within Telstra’s Online Services. During my nine-month contract, I successfully managed the deployment of:

• A revised homepage for telstra.com. As project lead I managed over 120 stakeholders and was responsible for the delivery of the telstra.com homepage. This involved working with a cross-functional internal team that included sales channels, front of house, marketing and legal to gather customer feedback and ensure smooth and successful launches.
• The redesign of a number telstra.com sites including; TV Guide (in conjunction with ITV World), Olympics, My Communications, Finance & Money, and Shopping.
• A review of the web development processes used throughout telstra.com in order to inject user-centered design into Telstra’s Online Rapid Delivery [ORD] methodology.
• In addition I acted as a subject matter expert in Web production processes, User-centered design and Information Architecture for over 40 other projects.

Nov 99 – Jun 00 Project Manager  for InteResource Media Australia.

As the company’s sole Project Manager, I was responsible for:

• Production and process management for all major projects.
• Project design, production and creative development.
• Internal training and quality control, document editing.
• Client liaison and new business development.
• During this period I achieved the delivery of a number of cutting edge web sites including: Moodys Investors (www.moodysinvestor.com.au), Timmins Consulting (timmins.com.au) and CEDIA Australia (cedia.com.au)

96 - Current Project Manager for Digital Dreaming

As the principal of my own business, I have delivered a number of projects, including:

• 1997 – 1999   Training Consultant to The Multimedia Tree Pty. Ltd. Responsible for all Internet / web training plus desktop publishing, graphics, database and Office software training. Trainees include staff from many of Sydney’s top IT firms.
• 1999 Internet Consultant to Flexirent Capital Pty. Ltd. Responsible for the development of two interactive Flash 4 web sites http://www.flexirent.com.au 
• 1999 Internet Training Consultant to Boral Building Products Pty. Ltd.  Responsible for training the Business Systems Information Group in Microsoft FrontPage 2000.
• 1998 – 1999 Legal IT consultant and Partner in NETLAW. Responsible for web site development, customer service, IP protection and development of new technology.
• 1998 – 1999 Database Consultant to The Cotton Store.  Responsible for the creation of two separate database systems to track visitors to the store and in-store classes.
• 1998 Internet Consultant to Teakle Ormsby Conn. Responsible for Internet strategy, web site design, implementation and marketing. www.teakle.com.au
• 1997 Technical Writer for  L.J. Hooker Technology. Responsible for the documentation of the Hooker Corp. Internal Data Warehouse using Folio View PIDK software.

Available on request.