Leslie J K Fountain

Leslie specialises in:

• developing in-house usability and accessibility guidelines and strategies
• building comprehensive user, task and environmental profiles
• evaluating designs and providing feasible solutions
• prototyping, user experience designing and carrying out research
• developing and facilitating training for end users, development teams and decision makers.

Biography

Leslie is joint Managing Director of System Concepts.  She holds an MSc and BSc Honours in Kinesiology from Dalhousie University, Canada; and an Executive MBA from Cass Business School (City of London University).  As a human factors consultant, Leslie has worked in medical, military, industrial and office environments across Europe, North America and the Caribbean. She sits on the executive committee of the UK Usability Professional's Association (UPA) and is a full member of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists.  Leslie is bilingual in English and French.

Before joining System Concepts, Leslie worked with Humansystems, Canada, as a human factors consultant in military, industrial and office environments. She provided human factors support on a number of projects which entailed the identification of stakeholder and user requirements, developing Business Use Cases and Use Case Models, evaluating designs and conducting usability studies. Leslie also worked for Ergoworks Atlantic, Canada, specializing in office ergonomics, developing and implementing ergonomics programs, providing ergonomics training and work area layouts.

In 2001, Leslie joined System Concepts. Here she has gained extensive experience providing clients with project management, strategies for usability and accessibility, and applying a user centred design approach. Leslie is the principle trainer for System Concepts usability and accessibility training programmes. Leslie is also experienced with tools such as Visio, Mannequin Pro, AutoCAD Light, Rational Rose, Microsoft Project and customer relationship management systems.

Leslie has SC Security Clearance from the Defence Vetting Agency.

Client Projects / Case Studies

• As part of the NHS Connecting for Health (CFH) Common User Interface (CUI) project, Leslie worked with Microsoft in various roles including planning and strategy for the User Experience team, project management, problem solving and user experience consulting.
• Leslie provided usability support and project management for the design of a cardiac output device.  This effort included expert reviews of user manuals, the user interface and hardware.  Additional work included ethnographic studies ‘on patient’ with nurses in intensive care units; user requirements gathering; and usability testing.
• Project manager for the development and application of in-house website accessibility guidelines for a leading high street bank.  This effort included the development and delivery of accessibility training courses, aimed at designers, developers, in-house evaluators and business decision makers.
• Carrying out usability evaluations, both with and without end users, as well as competitive analysis for products and computer systems (i.e. mobile phones, printers, websites).
• Providing human factors support as part of a design team by conducting task analysis, determining user requirements, evaluation of architectural drawings, providing practical solutions, and user trials of fully equipped prototyped designs.
• Project Manager for the redesign of the Trading Floor at one of the worlds leading Stock Exchanges.  Working closely with Market Operations, Floor Operations, Facilities and numerous financial firms, Leslie led the ergonomics redesign team.  This effort included defining the context of use, identifying stakeholder and user requirements, translating these requirements into design specifications, and developing and evaluating design concepts.
• Providing on-site usability expertise for the development of large web-based systems including providing support for various development teams, training, heuristic and design reviews, defect tracking and usability testing.
• Usability training and ergonomics training.
• Usability support, evaluation and design of military hardware and clothing including night vision goggles, situational awareness system for armoured vehicles, and adverse weather clothing.

Real life interests

• Running marathons (Dublin, London, Rome, Istanbul, Ottawa and Cologne).
• Triathlons, hiking and skiing.
• Travel and languages.
• Reading and music.

Keep up with Leslie on Linkedin at http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/leslie-fountain/1/23a/453