Michael Zarro, PhD
I lead a User Research practice area at a large international non-profit, with a focus on product design and user journeys for agile professionals, design thinkers, and lifelong learners.
I also develop and teach graduate information science courses as an Adjunct Professor.
My career journey starts at Penn School of Medicine, where I was a full-stack developer and designer on the team that launched VC2000, an innovative e-learning site for medical students and continuing medical education. Energized by this experience, I joined a pair of start-ups, working with life-sciences and information technology clients in Boston and Cambridge.
Fast forward a few years, and I'm designing user experiences for a $1 Billion+ e-commerce company that was later sold to eBay. Next up, I was awarded a research and teaching fellowship at Drexel University, where I presented papers at places like MIT, IBM, and Google while earning my Ph.D.
Today, I research and build systems to help people improve their lives, their business, and society. The combination of practice and research has given me a chance to work with amazing people from around the world, and explore emerging technologies like social media, health informatics, and AI.
Co-written with Wei Ding and Xia Lin, my book Information Architecture: The Design and Integration of Information Spaces, covers the main methods, techniques, and theories for organizing information while making it findable and interactive. Our goal is to help people who are learning IA / UX, along with practitioners looking for a guidebook, find techniques to manage information and implement user-centered design in their work. This updated and revised edition looks at integrated information spaces for mobile, web, and beyond - with a focus on putting principles into practice.