Heather Staudt: Communicating with Non-Technical Stakeholders
At some point as a developer, you’re going to need to talk to someone who is less technical than you about very technical things. And ultimately, one of these people while likely be responsible for whether your project makes it to completion or changes in scope that can impact your bottom line. We’re going to discuss some tips and tricks from the perspective of a non-technical product manager based on years of experience and stories of hilarious miscommunications that could have been avoided.
Heather Staudt is the UX Product Manager for BioRAFT, the provider of integrated laboratory safety and research management software solutions powered by Drupal. Heather completed her Masters of Science in Human Factors and Information Design from Bentley University in December 2014. She co-organizes Drupal Nights and has presented at Design4Drupal and NERD Summit. During her studies at Bentley, Heather performed user research for one of the largest Pharma companies in the United States, a small educational startup, and Sapient, a marketing and consulting firm. She also acted as co-organizer for the Boston Service Jam 2014, a 48 hour event promoting service design. Heather was an Expert in Residence at General Assembly for their course, User Experience Design (UXD). User Experience Design is a twelve-week course, taking students with varied experiences from zero to prototype in the UX design process. Working for BioRAFT has allowed Heather to deliver real-world UX experiences and artifacts to her students. Her specialties are product management, usability studies and interface design.
