Johnathan Nightingale

Current

Human Shield at Mozilla Corporation

Past

Usability Specialist at IBM
Staff Software Developer at IBM
Researcher at University of Toronto Psychology

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Education

University of Toronto

Recommended

2 people have recommended Johnathan

Connections

201 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

My Blog

Johnathan Nightingale’s Summary

Look at us here, doing this very old thing in a very new way. We're trying to have a conversation, to decide if we are a good fit for each other; for a business venture, or a new job, or a cup of coffee. And all we have is this ho-hum text box with which to do it. Very well then:

I am a synthesizer. No, not that kind. I have an educational background in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, and a professional background in Usability and Security and Software Development. I've worked at IBM, on enormous teams with giant budgets serving tiny little markets. I've worked at Mozilla, on a tiny team in startup mode serving the whole wide world.

I'm good at being in the middle of things, of drawing warring sides together, of understanding things and deciding what to do next. I'm even pretty okay at bringing those things out to the rest of the world, through speaking, writing, or shadow puppets.

Who are you?

Johnathan Nightingale’s Specialties:

Software development and design, user centered design, user advocacy, security, communications, people.

Johnathan Nightingale’s Experience

Human Shield

Mozilla Corporation

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

February 2007 — Present (2 years 11 months)

My job is to take 2 of the very human aspects of software design and development, usability and security, and blend them together in a way that makes the internet a better place. This includes a role representing Mozilla in public fora around issues of trust and safety on the web, as well as working with the broad community of contributors to the open source Firefox project.
Usability Specialist

IBM

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Computer Software industry)

October 2005 — February 2007 (1 year 5 months)

My job is to work with the development team from senior management through to individual developers to help them a) understand the vision for the product, b) understand the user of the product, c) understand the context of the product and the surrounding ecosystem in which it exists, and d) understand why they should care, and how to make meaningful changes to improve things in light of a), b) and c). It's about breadth *and* depth, with the tenacity of a pit bull.
Staff Software Developer

IBM

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Computer Software industry)

June 2001 — October 2005 (4 years 5 months)

Owned the code for a variety of product components over the years including notably: an easy to use WSDL editor for WebSphere Application Developer (Integration Edition) and later a visual XML Schema editor for WebSphere Integration Developer. It's hard to communicate here the general hotness of the team on which I worked, but suffice it to say we were each fiercely proud of the work we did, and of the praise we received for doing it. We produced quality, full stop.
Researcher

University of Toronto Psychology

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Research industry)

January 1996 — April 2001 (5 years 4 months)

Over summers and later during school as well, I managed a research lab focused on studies of visual attention (e.g. eye-tracking), cognition, and expertise. This is also when I co-wrote the artificial intelligence tutorial review for our undergrad students. Ask me about expert chess players some time, they're an interesting bunch.