Maria Frebel

Maria specialises in:

• Human Computer Interaction
• Evaluation of interactive products and systems
• User experience research
• Interaction design
• Accessibility testing and audits.

Biography

Maria started as a Consultant with System Concepts in 2009.  She holds a degree in Communication Psychology from the University of Applied Sciences Zittau/Goerlitz in Germany.  Within her course, she specialised in Human Computer Interaction and attained a sound knowledge in evaluating and optimising interactive user centred systems.
Maria’s dissertation on mobile website usability involved evaluating the Amazon website on the touch screen smart phones iPhone and Blackberry Storm, carrying out a usability test with 20 participants.
Prior to joining System Concepts Maria was an intern with phaydon|research+consulting, a user experience consultancy in Cologne.  Examples of relevant projects include:

• Usability testing of a navigation application for mobile phones
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis of online survey data for an established broadcast provider.

Client Projects / Case Studies

Maria has industry experience in media, insurance, social networking, mobile, travel, and e-commerce.  Some of her recent projects include:

• Conducting in-home user research in Germany as part of an international ethnographic study
• Developing User Interface Guidelines for Amadeus who provides IT solutions for the travel industry.  This included an expert and competitor review, two rounds of user testing, producing wireframes in Visio, writing the User Interface Guidelines and running a workshop with stakeholders
• Creating an interactive prototype of the quote process of an insurance website using Axure
• Expert review of four competitor dual SIM phones using the heuristics provided by the client
• Accessibility audit of high-fidelity wireframes for one of a major network provider’s health products.  This included assessing the wireframes against the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, giving recommendations on how to meet these requirements and delivering a workshop with stakeholders
• Usability testing with children for one of the BBC’s websites.

Real life interests

• Psychology.
• Books.
• Baking.

Keep up with Maria on Linkedin at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mariafrebel