Usability Team

Cognitive is the first organization of expertise in ergonomics of the interaction in Canada.

The members of our team are:

• professionals of interactive ergonomics who also have a solid basic training in a technological field.
• They have an average experience of more than 15 years in design and evaluation of interactive systems.
  
  

Francois is a cognitive ergonomics and usability practitioner. Over the last 18 years, he has designed over 100 systems, performed over 2,000 cognitive task analysis in the field and 2,000 usability testing sessions. Some of his clients are : Amazon, Ericcson, Nortel Networks, Royal Bank of Canada, Air-Canada.

After completing a B.Sc in Physics, he became interested in interactive systems through contracts with multimedia artists. He completed a Master's Degree in Cognitive Ergonomics at Polytechnique of the University of Montreal. While pursuing his Master Degree, he researched human errors, 3D display, and Usability Principles and guidelines.

In 1994, after 3 years as a practitioner at CRIM, he formed Cognitive Group Inc. He provided consulting in user interface design and process simplification.

Over the last three years, he completed the development of complete end-to-end solutions for credit adjudication and compliance monitoring for commercial lending. He has published numerous papers on 3D display, wearable computers, input device, and task analysis.

He frequently gives workshops on usability, web design and task analysis and teaches at University of Quebec and Polytechnique.

Since 1993, Marie-Claude has been working in the field of software and hardware product development. Since then, she started to be interested to system and human-machines process failures, which brought her to join private training in cognitive ergonomics.

She has been practicing cognitive ergonomics since 1997, a discipline that she integrated to her system engineer's practice at Nortel Networks. In this position, she has been using the cognitive ergonomic techniques in numerous development projects during the phases of needs analysis, high-level design, detailed design, verification tests and implementation at user sites. She is recognised for her particular ability to analyse and concisely formulate the users goals for complex systems in telecommunication, Internet and financial fields.

She appreciates Cognitive Group's expertise and efficiency since 1997, while she took professional training at CRIM and as being their customer at Nortel Networks. At Cognitive Group, she works on transactional website and on process control projects.

She obtained a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1991. Parallel to work, she is pursuing superior studies in software ergonomics at École Polytechnique de Montréal.

Jerome holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Montreal. Jerome worked at Sobeco and Ernst & Young. Jerome is known in the industry as a "super-programmer": he designed his first application - a grammar learning game - at the age of 7 and wrote video games at the age of 12. Jerome has comprehensive experience and expertise in designing and building end-to-end operational applications. His designs are currently in use at a number of major client sites. As Business Banker obtains the funding it requires for expansion, Jerome will lead software architectural design, management and testing activities.

Michel Leblanc is a graduate of the first class of Master of Sciences in electronic commerce, a multidisciplinary program from HEC Montréal and Université de Montréal, with a specialization in management.

He is the founder and President of Analyweb, a consultancy company specializing in e-business management and marketing. At the tactical level, Mr. Leblanc has been involved in numerous Web customer acquisitions mandates and more specifically, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mandates and Web positioning analysis.

Analyweb is partner to RBC Finance Group Chair of e-commerce and LATECE. Mr. Leblanc has been published at CIRANO and is a regular contributor to LesAffaires.com, and he animates blogs at michelleblanc.com and Web-marketing-frog.blogspot.com. He has been speaker at numerous forums including The Conference Board of Canada, HEC Montreal, Symposium Interdoc and CIRANO just to name a few. He has been involved with analysis and implementation of cutting edge e-business related technologies, management and marketing activities and strategies in a wide range of industries. Mr. Leblanc has provided research and advice to Fortune 500 as well as SMB’s, government agencies and associations

Jean-Marc is in charge of directing research projects. He is Professor at Polytechnique of the University of Montreal and is a research associate with Cognitive Systems. He holds a PhD from Sorbonne University and did postdoctoral research at NASA - Ames Research Center with Stue Card. He began his research career with NASA and has worked on human errors in complex systems, design principles and text editors.