I’m a *Product Designer* and *UX Strategist* located in Montreal, Canada. With over 20 years of experience, I’ve been responsible for understanding, conceptualizing and implementing designs that translate into better experience for users worldwide and leading design teams.
In my most recent position at *HashiCorp*, I’m also responsible for managing a team of eight talented designers. I’m passionate about design (of course!), but also everything related to building a UX Team and improving processes. I’m a result driven person interested in methods, and discussions about how to improve collaboration, motivation and team satisfaction.
I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Communication - Major (Marketing and Advertising - Minor), in which I learned how to use Marketing Strategies. I also have a Certificate in Visual Communication Design, in which I studied disciplines such as: Ergonomics, Semiotics and HCI.
Later, I took a Certificate in Web Content Accessibility at Université de Montreal, where I learned WCAG. Not finding it enough, I took a Diploma at McGill - Diploma in Management (Concentration in E-business), in which I learned more about Management and Web Marketing Strategies.
Then, I decided to stop the Diploma to start my Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering (Concentration in Software Ergonomics) at École Polytechnique de Montréal, where I wrote my [Thesis about the creation and use of Personas][gv-2016].
In the last years, I also have published three papers:
- *[Empirical Study on the Documentation Phase in the Human-Centered Design Process][gv-2018]*, — AHFE
- *[The Practitioners’ Points of View on the Creation and Use of Personas for User Interface Design][gv-2016]*, Jun 19, 2016 Theory, Design, Development and Practice Volume 9731 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp 233-244
- *[Mobile development using web technologies focusing on games][gv-2013]*, Sep 24, 2013 ACM Digital Library
And I won two prizes:
- Lauréat Plume D’or Internet Et Nouveaux Médias. Site Internet De La Ville De Granby L’ACMQMay 2012
- Prix Élixir Bénévole de l’anneé PMI-Montreal (Project Management Institute) Nov 2011
[gv-2013]: https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2526188.2528541 "A. Santanchè, R. Boulanger, G. Viana, R. Panaggio, B. Melo, and H. Aboud, “Mobile development using web technologies focusing on games,” in Proceedings of the 19th Brazilian symposium on Multimedia and the web - WebMedia ’13, Salvador, Brazil: ACM Press, 2013, pp. 13–14."
[gv-2016]: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39510-4_22 "G. Viana and J.-M. Robert, “The Practitioners’ Points of View on the Creation and Use of Personas for User Interface Design,” in Human-Computer Interaction. Theory, Design, Development and Practice, M. Kurosu, Ed., in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 233–244."
[gv-2018]: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94947-5_3 "G. Viana, D. Azar, and K. Morin, “Empirical Study on the Documentation Phase in the Human-Centered Design Process,” in Advances in Usability, User Experience and Assistive Technology, T. Z. Ahram and C. Falcão, Eds., in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019, pp. 27–35."