Lester D. Nelson

I am a research scientist, currently working at PARC, and involved in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and Software Engineering.

The resume version of this story is available

Highlights

My career has moved from systems and software engineering in development groups to socio-technical design in multidisciplinary research teams. A thing I enjoy about working with those with different expertise (social, design, market, theoretical, practical) is the unexpected insights of multiple perspectives and motivations.

I see my work as a long conversation around the socio-technical design cycle (actual practice to designed solutions to evaluation and around again). This has lead to a moving back in forth from research to development, carrying the experiences of each along.

My research interests of late includes the designing and evaluations systems for communication and collaboration, grounded in workplace observations; e.g.,

The methods I have applied have largely been quite practical: design, prototyping and evaluation, based on field work, all performed in a multi-discplinary team way.

Things I like to see at work

Not every job has these at all phases, but some combination, taken together over time, allows good things to happen for all involved.

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