Paula Thornton

Current

Blogger at FASTforward Blog
Enterprise 2.0 Workshops at iknovate

Past

Consultant at Business Intelligence, Inc.
Experience Design Strategist at EDS
UX Architect, Internet Marketing at Texas Instruments

UX Architect at Constella Group
Director, Sales & Marketing at Kraft Landscape
Consultant: Experience Design at Verizon Data Services
Lead Consultant at Luminant Worldwide
Data Warehousing Project Manager at Decision Consultants
Decision Support Analyst at MCI
Senior Technical Writer, Operations Analyst at Security Pacific Bank
Data Processing Documentation Specialist at Pay 'n Save Corporation

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Education

University of Washington
University of Washington
Eastern Washington University

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Recommended

3 people have recommended Paula

Connections

284 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Websites

Paula Thornton’s Summary

Enterprise 2.0 Thought Leadership: http://twurl.nl/q2eh4d

Industry Conversations: http://twitter.com/Rotkapchen

Design Thinking Champion: http://twurl.nl/y5px4o (conversations), http://twurl.nl/xs70qr (events), http://twurl.nl/lvlrry (references)

Paula Thornton’s Specialties:

Design Thinking, Innovation, Enterprise 2.0 / Web 2.0, Total Customer Experience, User Experience, Interaction Design, Experience Design, Design Research, Cross-Channel Optimization, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Computing, Enterprise Architecture

Paula Thornton’s Experience

Blogger

FASTforward Blog

(Think Tanks industry)

June 2006 — Present (3 years 2 months)

Research and review industry topics related to Enterprise 2.0. Debate thoughts liberally :)
Enterprise 2.0 Workshops

iknovate

(Information Technology and Services industry)

1980 — Present (29 years)

Leverage training budgets to create a Enterprise 2.0 Strategy, complete w/timeline using Design Thinking and Visual Thinking techniques.
Consultant

Business Intelligence, Inc.

(Information Technology and Services industry)

September 2008 — January 2009 (5 months)

Lead for Enterprise 2.0 benchmark/prototype. With great team from Perot Systems, evaluated social computing technologies to facilitate Innovation/Idea Managment.

Was able to personally do a deep dive with Traction TeamPage, shaping it into a specialized solution with minimal effort (highly configurable).
Experience Design Strategist

EDS

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; EDS; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2006 — July 2008 (2 years 4 months)

Evolving Experience Design practices and optimizing work inside EDS, via role-based workspaces, and other Enterprise Workplace initaitives (SharePoint 2007 platforms).

Initiated Experience Design and Administration activities for Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, ID (one of 10 primary facilities supporting Department of Energy research). Faced design challenges imposed by the AquaLogic portal structure and its hard-wired collaboration interface. Focused efforts to support the mental model of the worker rather than the organizational structure.
UX Architect, Internet Marketing

Texas Instruments

(Public Company; Semiconductors industry)

September 2005 — March 2006 (7 months)

Redesigned functional interfaces for TI.com (e.g. bug list search).
Evolved design research activities (tranactional analytics, behavioral analytics, feedback loops, ethnographic discovery).
UX Architect

Constella Group

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

October 2004 — April 2005 (7 months)

Projects supporting Centers for Disease Control:
+ Content architecture to support a CDC-wide call center
+ WIreframes/interface and process design for call center searches
+ Workflow design, interface optimization for Documentum WebPublisher
+ Continuous interaction with call center staff for discovery, process improvement
+ Strategic site concept created for the Select Agent Program: increase regulation compliance by improving content access, clarity and supporting implicit processes
Director, Sales & Marketing

Kraft Landscape

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Construction industry)

August 2003 — October 2004 (1 year 3 months)

Leveraged this position to gain exposure to the commercial construction industry and the potential of B2B exchanges to facilitate cross-company collaboration on large initatives.
Consultant: Experience Design

Verizon Data Services

(Public Company; VZ; Telecommunications industry)

June 2001 — October 2001 (5 months)

Ethnographic research to validate design assumptions to create a 'common desktop' for Call-Center Reps (across 60+ applications). Identified major mis-conceptions about what would be successful, due to highly efficient and successful adaptations by the workers. Created new UI designs and workflows, focusing on appropriate grouping and layering of key data for calls. Effort stymied by organizational dysfunction in IT (infighting over 'authorization' and 'control').
Lead Consultant

Luminant Worldwide

(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; LUMT; Information Technology and Services industry)

September 1999 — March 2001 (1 year 7 months)

Information Architect / Content Management Practice

eBusiness interaction designs for: American Airlines, CellularOne, ProStaff, R.J. Reynolds, SMU Cox, @link

Deliverables:
Channel/Touchpoint Analysis
Competitive Online Market Evaluations
Site/Content Inventories
Personas and Scenarios
Enterprise Content Strategies

Established relationships with technology vendors to define customer experience design tool needs.
Data Warehousing Project Manager

Decision Consultants

(Information Technology and Services industry)

1999 — 1999 (less than a year)

DW practice group pulled together for planned account. Put basics of practice into place, shakeup at account, project pulled, practice folded.
Decision Support Analyst

MCI

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

October 1992 — February 1998 (5 years 5 months)

Helped define the warehouseMCI architecture, to deliver database marketing (CRM) to Consumer Marketing, leveraging Freiends & Family data.

Provided team with data warehousing practices/concepts/literature.

Defined data mart requirements, supplying segmented leads to telemarketing centers (200GB/wk).

Designed web-based Information Services to deliver metadata ("cognitive" access to data) for over 2000 database marketing elements (client/address/billing data; demographic and credit data).

Conducted in-house data warehousing conferences with consultants form MCISystemhouse, BT and related vendors to evolve the industry, discussing: warehouse/mart architectures, metamodels, data mining, acquisition tools (ETL), warehouse management and repository technologies.
Senior Technical Writer, Operations Analyst

Security Pacific Bank

(Public Company; Information Technology and Services industry)

1989 — 1992 (3 years)
Data Processing Documentation Specialist

Pay 'n Save Corporation

(Retail industry)

July 1980 — February 1983 (2 years 8 months)

Turned a temporary typing assignment into a new job I created, taking the documentation role away from the DBA. Manager had first PC in the company, on which I learned to use WordStar (via CPM operating system). Even leveraged the art department to create visual icons to enhance the workflow user documentation for the state-of-the-art automated warehousing system.

Paula Thornton’s Education

University of Washington

Certificate , Data Resource Management , 1990 — 1991

Phenomenal program, taught by great leaders in the Seattle program, many were part of the Boeing think tank.
University of Washington

BA , Business - Marketing , September 1978 — June 1980
Eastern Washington University

Music (Vocal) September 1974 — June 1976

German Minor Earned (credits earned while still in High School)

Activities and Societies:

Theatre Productions

Additional Information

Paula Thornton’s Websites:

Paula Thornton’s Interests:

Twitterholic: rotkapchen

Paula Thornton’s Groups:

Web Analytics 2008, 2007
Design Thinking 2007
Co-Chair Programs, DFW-UPA.org 2007
Content Management Professionals (http://www.cmprofessionals.org/) 2004-2006
Information Architecture Summits 2000-2004, FastHouston