James R. Miller
14889 Jadestone Drive
Sherman Oaks, California 91403
650-224-2562
jmiller@miramontes.com
https://www.miramontes.com
Objective
A leadership position in defining innovative interactive technologies and bringing products based on them rapidly to market.
Recent employment history
ProductionNext, Inc., Sherman Oaks, California: CEO, January 2015 - present. ProductionNext provided film and video producers with an integrated set of tools for scheduling, budgeting, and otherwise planning their productions. These tools were built as a fundamentally collaborative, cloud-based system: Producers could add other ProductionNext members to their projects, and give them access to the parts of the projects that match their responsibilities. The tools shared a common database, so that changes in one area automatically led to corresponding changes throughout the system. From 2015 to 2020, ProductionNext provided these services to almost 1000 producers. As CEO, I have been responsible for the overall vision and direction of ProductionNext, including product strategy, business planning, and corporate management. I have also been responsible for all the software development of the ProductionNext site. More on ProductionNext can be found at https://www.miramontes.com/systems/productionnext.
Miramontes Interactive, Sherman Oaks, California: Principal, November 1997 - present. Miramontes Interactive provides consulting services for user-centered design. I work with my clients to define user and system requirements for web sites and interactive applications, design and build effective user interfaces meeting those requirements, and iteratively test the usability of these systems. My clients include Microsoft, Samsung, AT&T, Cisco, SBC, Sun Microsystems, the Institute for the Future, and a variety of small companies; together, our projects have ranged from public websites to web-based collaborative systems for internal business processes. A portfolio of past projects and other work is at https://www.miramontes.com.
Gateway, Inc., San Jose, California: Director of User Experience, July 1999 - January 2000. I was responsible for user experience design and development for Gateway's Internet Appliances Division. I built a cross-disciplinary team of engineers, designers, and usability specialists, and led them to determine customer requirements for information appliances, develop prototype and fully-engineered appliance environments, and, throughout this process, insure the total usability of the products. Towards this end, we designed and implemented several prototype appliance environments on stock PC hardware and Linux.
Apple Computer, Cupertino, California: Program Manager, ATG/Intelligent Systems, January 1993 - November 1997. I led a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers working at the intersection of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. Projects within our program addressed such topics as intelligent document analysis, information access, spoken language interaction, networked communities, and intelligent agents. I was responsible for defining the overall research direction of the group, evangelizing the program's work inside and outside Apple, and making technical contributions of my own. I led the transfer of one of these projects, Apple Data Detectors, from our team to Apple’s system software group, where it was released as a product.
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, California: September 1988 - January 1993.
Department Manager, Human-Computer Interaction Department, November 1991 - January 1993. I was responsible for a department of over twenty user interface professionals, whose projects broadly covered the field of human-computer interaction, including multimedia, information access, end-user programming, computer-supported cooperative work, pen-based interfaces, and natural language processing. I worked with project managers and technical contributors to define and execute research projects and product division collaborations, and represented the department inside and outside of HP.
Project Manager, Human-Computer Interaction Department, September 1988 - August 1992. I was responsible for a series of projects on end-user programming, distributed interfaces, and natural language processing. These projects delivered to HP divisions an application framework in which end users could construct personalized, information-intensive applications, and PC-based systems enabling uniform user access to PC and Unix applications.
Microelectronics and Computing Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, Texas: Team Leader, Intelligent User Assistance Project, September 1984 - September 1988. My project delivered to MCC member companies an application-independent toolkit for the development of user assistance capabilities, including question answering, coaching, and direct control of the application.
Professional activities
ACM SIGCHI. From 1994 to 1996, I was the elected chair of SIGCHI, the 5000-member ACM special interest group on human-computer interaction. I have also held other positions on the SIGCHI Executive Committee, and have been a member of the organization's Conference Management Committee.
Co-chair, CHI'92 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems). I organized and ran the principle international conference on human-computer interaction. My co-chair and I directed a team of over forty volunteers and paid staff in the design and execution of all aspects of the 2400-person conference — technical, social, and commercial activities, including presentations, publications, contract negotiations, and on-site logistics.
CHI program: Associate chair (1987; 1999-2003) and reviewer (1987-2010); CHI Best Paper Awards chair (2006), CHI Experience Reports chair (2006), ACM interactions editorial board, 1994 - 2008; reviewer for ACM ACE (Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology) conference (2006-2007), Mobile HCI '05 (2005), ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, International Journal of Human-Computer Systems, AAAI Press, and ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems.
National Science Foundation Strategy Workshop on Human-Centered Systems, 1997.
Over forty-five refereed technical journal publications and book chapters, three patents, and numerous conference panel and tutorial presentations.
Publications
Available at https://www.miramontes.com/resume/publications.php.
Educational history
Ph.D.: Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles.
M.A.: Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles.
B.S.: Social Science - Computer Science, Michigan State University.
References
On request.