Jesse Zolna, Ph.D.
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Jesse worked for Dr. Don Rickert in an in-house corporate Consumer Insights/UX/Usability group (at S1 Corporation) over a period of 4 years, starting as a Masters degree Intern and eventually becoming a regular part-time employee while working on his Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology at Georgia Tech. He was Dr. Rickert's most trusted adviser on the state-of-the-art on everything from advanced research methods/statistical analysis to the latest in usability testing methods. He also educated Dr. Rickert on the obscurities of the Hip-Hop world, a topic of which he possesses unbelievable knowledge.
Jesse also helped to found Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, and continued to work as a contractor for us, even after his muse guided him to New York to swim with the sharks in the New York Consumer/Market Research scene. He as returned to the fold for a yet-TBD period of time.
Dr. Zolna has deep and wide-ranging experience in user research, interface design and customer insight. He has the rare ability to apply his usability expertise, research skills, software development experience, analytical thinking and creativity to producing useful, usable and compelling user interfaces for interactive and transactional systems.
Specialties
- All phases of usability testing, survey research, field studies, focus groups, ethnography, A/B testing, contextual inquiry, expert and consumer interviews, persona, card sorting, ZMET, etc.
- SPSS, Flash, HTML/CSS, Morae, SnagIt, Photoshop, Illustrator, Visio, survey development tools
- Usability inspection; requirement specification; quantitative and qualitative data analysis; working with marketing managers, engineers, designers, product managers, and business analysts, among others.
See Jesse's complete profile on LinkedIn.
Shep and Darci Jones of Fiddarci Lutherie
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Shep Jones (owner of Fiddarci Lutherie) and his wife, Darci Jones are key business partners to Don Rickert Research & Design. Shep is a Master Craftsman and Inventor and Prototype Builder. His workshop (called a "lutherie" when the product is stringed instruments) is where all of the premier Rickert & Ringholz/Fiddarci Lutherie violins are manufactured.
Darci Jones, an accomplished player and teacher of the violin/fiddle, who is also the fiddler of the group Hooley serves as quality adviser for every instrument we make. She is also the "test pilot" of every newly-invented instrument and a celebrity on YouTube (see www.youtube.com/user/DoctorFiddle) for her extraordinary playing of every unusual instrument handed to her (with never a complaint).
Jonathon Rickert
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Jonathon is in the blue shirt in the first photo, making glass work in the second (the white line between his hands is a 2400 degree Fahrenheit Oxygen/Propane torch flame). The third photo is, we hope, an "off-the-clock" photo from his festival observational research archives.
When not working with Don Rickert Research & Design, he is a student (Anthropology) at Appalachian State University and a craftsman specializing in glass artifacts (approaching Master status)...some of his creations in hard glass such as highly-prize "marbles", pendants and orbs are already being acquired by collectors even at his young age.
Jonathon is our in-house Design Researcher and Adviser on a number of niche segments, including the product preferences and buying behavior of:
- Musicians
- "20-something" consumers in general
- The Artist/Artisan community
- Frequent music festival-goers
- Folk festival attendees
He also manages seasonal sales booth operations for our "child" company, Don Rickert Musical Instruments.
