Diane McKerlie, PhD

Diane McKerlie is an interaction designer and usability expert at Design | Strategy Inc, which she established in 1993 to deliver user interface design and usability evaluation services. Her consulting practice provides thought-leadership in design strategy and usability, assisting organizations to understand the human side of technology.

Diane draws on a pool of talented professionals to build the right team of experts to meet the shifting and varying needs of clients and projects. Her network of associates includes usability experts, content authors, visual artists, and technology partners.

How does she design outstanding user interfaces?

Beginning with her clients’ unique competitive advantages, Diane leads product stakeholders to consensus on simple, elegant, and innovative solutions. She assists her clients to reshape techno-centric and data-driven ideas, and then designs a user interface solution that is meaningful to real end-users. Her designs are successful because they meet end-user expectations for ease of use and they influence customer behaviours toward organizational goals.

“Negotiation, collaboration, and influence are as much a part of designing and solution building as creativity and innovation.”

What about experience?

Diane draws on over a decade of user interface design experience. She has designed successful solutions for a variety of end-user groups such as, neurosurgeons, postal workers, technology trainers, bank tellers, and financial traders. She has led the user interface design effort at Tier One organizations such as, NCR Corporation, TD Canada Trust, and the United States Postal Service. She has the experience to handle any user interface design project.

Full Client List

An academic track record?

Dr. McKerlie is well-published in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community and gives lectures to special interest groups on design and usability. She was an instructor to the graduate program in Computer Science at the University of Toronto and she is currently a member of the Thesaurus Revision Advisory Committee for the National Information Standards Organization in the US. Diane received a PhD from London South Bank University in the UK for her research on the relationship of design methods to knowledge management. Her real-world approach is supported by a principled and academic foundation.

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Publications collected at interaction-design.org
Profile at LinkedIn. Are we connected?