Sara Makarenko has over 20 years experience in software interface and information design. She has worked with platforms spanning Web to Windows to UNIX. Industries include geospatial, relational databases, telecom operations-support, network monitoring, engineering change and problem reporting transactional systems, SGML markup, remote collaboration tools, satellite signal enhancers, industrial process control hardware and software, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) simulation systems. Her passion is "making complex things simple".

Based in Calgary, Canada, Sara is currently a senior product designer for Autodesk's line of geospatial products. She designed "from the ground up" a web-mapping authoring interface and thin-client AJAX viewer. She has collaborated with a remote team of designers on a desktop-based CAD-GIS product and its underlying data management platform. Always interested in how to incorporate best practices into her daily teamwork, she continues to explore software development processes that combine customer intelligence, creativity, agility, and rigor to produce the most satisfying user experience possible within the constraints of the business.

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