Personal Information

Name: Susana Cristina Lopes Vilaça
e-mail: susanacvilaca[at]gmail.com
Address: Lisbon

Professional Goals and Competence Areas

My professional goals are to make a career as a usability and user experience consultant. My love for  technology also makes me want to be involved in building good quality user interfaces, always applying usability concepts.

My other passion is related with agile methodologies as I think they really help improving software quality and project management. Other aspect that is often neglected is requirements management. A good requirements management also helps improve software quality by bringing users a product that meets their expectations.

This three areas (Usability, Agile Methodologies and Requirements Management) are all related and my goal is trying to continuously improve their relationship and make my contribution to the software community.

Finally I have the goal of continuously keep learning and growing independently of where I’m working and even outside my competence areas. I think culture and information are a very powerful tool.

Professional Experience

Feb/09-Present Web Consultant at Wingman

As a Web Consultant at Wingman my job consists on understanding what our clients want and translate those objectives into a pleasing and usable website. I define visually what the site will have, by building a sitemap and how it will look like, by building wireframes.
I’m also involved in creating web marketing strategies for our clients.

Aug/08-Jan/09 Configuration Management Consulting at SonaeCom

At SonaeCom I worked as a consultant on the Configuration Management team. This team makes part of the Quality team and has the following responsibilities:

  • Conducting audits before the product goes to testing and production phases, and whenever its necessary.
  • Validating product artefacts and reporting eventual problems.
  • Creating new product releases (by request of the project manager) making sure all problems from the previous release were closed.

All these tasks are conducted using the configuration management software Dimensions.

Mar/08-Jun/08 Technology Specialist at Microsoft Portugal

From March 2008 to June 2008 I was a Technology Specialist at Microsoft Portugal. I had the function of exploring leading Microsoft technologies like Windows Server 2008/2003, Hyper-V, and System Center products, like Virtual Machine Manager and Configuration Manager. Also I had the responsibility of building demos of those technologies and present them to Microsoft customers.

Sep/07-Oct/07 Instructor at Projecto FEUP

From September 2007 to October 2007 I was a tutor in Projecto FEUP. This project aims at improving the integration and learning of students in their first year in college. Teams of 6/7 people are formed  and they are assigned a subject, which they must develop by making a report and presentation. In this project I was responsible for 3 teams and my main function was to guide them in their work.

Jul/07 Instructor at Universidade Júnior

On July 2007 I was a tutor in Universidade Júnior. Universidade Júnior is a project of the Universidade do Porto for youngsters with ages between 11 and 18, and is held during July. In this experience I was responsible of teaching to 13/14 year old teenagers a tool from Google called Google Sketchup and I was also responsible for them during their stay in the campus.

Feb/06-May/07 Co-Founder and Human Resources Manager at NeCG

From February  2006 to May 2007 I was Human Resources Manager at NeCG. I was responsible for the recruitment of new members and also for explaining them the NeCG’s goals and mission. During this experience I participated actively on the organization of several events  which main objective was to divulge NeCG.

Education and Training

2003-2008 Masters Degree in Computer Engineering

On July 2008 I finished my course on Computer Engineering at Faculdade de Engenharia of Universidade do Porto. As my final project I did a dissertation on Human-Computer Interaction’s Role on Geographical Information Systems.

Dissertation grade: 18
Final Average: 15

Oct/07-Present Microsoft Student Partner

I joined this program on October 2007. The Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) Program aims creating opportunities of personal development to all its members. As a MSP I’m having the opportunity to interact with new people, go to events and also put in practise some of my ideas and projects.

Additional Information

Social Skills

I consider myself to be a person with good communication skills, sociable, and with a good ability to work in a team. I’m also a responsible and organized person.

Technical Skills

  • Advanced knowledge in C/C++, Java, PHP, SQL and XML.
  • Medium knowledge in Oracle databases, C#, X3D and XNA.
  • Experience with software development tools like Eclipse, NetBeans, InteliJ and Microsoft Visual Studio.
  • Experience with web development tools like Adobe Dreamweaver and Zend Studio.
  • Experience with Adobe Photoshop.

Interests

Meeting new places, cinema, being with friends, art, books, etc.