destraynor

Who is this Guy?

Hi, I’m Des. Thanks for visiting. This page is an accumulation of the various bits and pieces of me around the net. I have accounts under the name destraynor on pretty much every worthwhile web application, and also some pretty weak ones.

My main technical interests are usability (UXD), Education and Programming. Thoughts and articles related to all of them appear on my blog.

I live in Dublin, Ireland, and am 27 years young. People mainly come here to read my blog, please comment if you like it.

You can contact me at destraynor [at] gmail [dot] com. I'll write back to you on the same day, so give it a shot!

My Job

iQ Content

I’m employed by iQ Content, who are affectionately referred to as “The good guys of Irish web design”. I can safely say that I work with some of the most talented interaction designers I’ve ever met. iQ Content provide consultancy and training in Usability, Interaction Design, Content Creation, Accessibility and more. If you hire iQ for a job, I can personally guarantee you’ll never regret it. We’re that good.

I started there in April 2007, and since starting I’ve been hugely impressed by the dedication and sheer focus on providing absolute quality in every service we offer.

I was lucky in that I sorta had a pick of jobs, but since day one in iQ I’ve been 100% confident that it’s the most challenging and exciting place to work in Ireland for a person with my interests.

My PhD

All education is driven by assessment. Bad assessment implies a bad education. My PhD studied how programming skill should be assessed during a students formative years in college.

I began my PhD under the supervision of Paul Gibson in NUI Maynooth, and am still dying trying to write up.

Interests

When I don’t have a keyboard in front of me, my interests are playing soccer, hiking (well realistically it's just walking through Glendalough), and nights out in Dublin. When I do have a keyboard in front of me, I tend to do the following…

Read really good websites, and novels of questionable quality

Check out my current list of wesbites. Every 6 months or so I delete them all, and re-enter them from memory, it helps me maintain a reasonable size list that I actually get through. When there is nothing out there I’ll either re-read classics, visit recommended blogs, or on a really bad day trawl through digg, reddit and slashdot.

I read trash crime fiction novels. Lee Child, Karin Slaughter, Michael Connelly, Patrick Kellerman, Robert Craig, Mo Hayden, and more. Basically if there is a lead character with a keen eye for detail, and a shitload of bodies, then I've read it, or it's on the list.

Mess around on other webites

Other than my blog, I’ve left my mark at a few other sites…