The professional

Ilana has been engaged in user experience management and consulting for over 20 years. She has worked with a wide variety of organisations to help them achieve a user-centred design strategy, helped corporate and government clients accomplish their business goals through the design of their sites and applications, and conducted numerous expert reviews and usability tests.

Ilana enjoys the challenge of working with clients to determine their goals for each project, and fine-tuning outcomes that will help achieve them. She also enjoys mentoring and working closely with her clients and colleagues, and is passionate about teaching on subjects related to UX. She has run numerous public and customised courses, and delivered papers and workshops at the University of Technology, Sydney and at OZCHI and other groups.

Ilana joined Optimal Experience in mid-2008 after many years applying her expertise and experience in senior consulting roles for The Hiser Group, most recently as Consulting Manager (NSW) responsible for developing a team of UX consultants, mentoring them, project management, and business development. She established Hiser’s Sydney office in 1994.

Earlier, Ilana started her career at Xerox and then Unisys Corporation in Los Angeles as a user interface designer. She moved to Australia in 1989 and, as Usability Manager for the Australian Centre for Unisys Software, was responsible for introducing user-centred design to the organisation.

Ilana is active in the local professional community. She was first chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIG-CHI). She is a member of Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA).

Ilana has a Masters degree in Industrial Psychology from University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.