The GUIguy® is Ken Schiff, who started evaluating and critiquing user interface designs for personal computers in 1985, and since 1989 has been working almost exclusively with GUIs, particularly Microsoft Windows. He describes himself as a "down in the trenches with dirty fingernails" practitioner, (rather than a researcher in academia). He works with developers from inception, and offers design reviews and usability inspections on already existing designs.
Ken started Productivity Through Technology® as a sole proprietorship in 1989 to evangelize well-designed, usable software. The company was incorporated in 1993. GUIguy® and Productivity Through Technology® became registered trademarks in 1998.
Utilizing strategic partnerships in several domains, he has collaborated with some of the best minds in the developer community, and can bring many of those resources into play in most projects.
Ken has been communicating technical information to non-technical people for over 20 years, and has taught (and written the courseware for) subjects as diverse as computer literacy, accounting software, emergency medicine and fire-fighting, and house construction. A trainer and teacher by nature, his enthusiasm and passion for good GUI design has made him a popular conference speaker. His conversational writing style has been well-received in the development community.
With work experience in such diverse industries prior to joining the computer industry, Ken's eclectic background gives him a point of view unique in the development community. He is also fluent in Spanish, having spent two years in the Peace Corps in Chile. Here's his resume. (Requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
Many people have asked, so here's the story...
After a couple of phone calls with a prospective client, Ken was hired as a consultant.
Ken showed up at the appointed time and place, and the president of the company introduced him around the company, saying, "Here's the GUI guy I was telling you about…"
Nothing really happened until Ken went went to join America OnLine and was faced with the choice of a screen name as part of the sign-up process. As a default, the system offered "KenS1797." He said to himself, "Hey! I'm not the 1797th of anything! and blurted out (through the keyboard) "KenGUIguy."
People found that kenguiguy@aol.com was easily remembered and they generally liked it. Subsequent email addresses were kenguiguy@msn.com and kenguiguy@acm.org. (Inevitably, it was 102506,1313@compuserve.com.) By the way, all those accounts are now closed.
When it became time for a domain name, it was obvious that guiguy.com had to be it. It was kept a deep, dark secret until InterNIC gave the word that the domain had been successfully registered.
In the spirit of "it's cheaper and easier to protect a mark than defend it," the GUIguy has registered all of these domains...
Note: This page is part of a text-only, scaled-down version of the main GUIguy web site which is located at http://guiguy.com. The reason for creating this mini-site is so that people with disabilities and people with older browsers could still learn about the GUIguy and his company. This message will be near the end of each page in this mini-site.
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