Meet Our Team
Paul Elrif
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Paul is a principal at Caelus where he researches, designs, and builds custom user experiences for a variety of clients. He is affiliate faculty, at the University of Washington, where he teaches graduate students about human-centered design and engineering, experimental methods, and statistics. He also owns a company that manufactures raw, organic nutrition bars: www.dragonflybars.com
Paul sits on a few boards of directors, including the Natural Foods Products Association's Northwest chapter. Previous to his time at Caelus, Dragonfly, and UW Paul spent 14 years at Microsoft as a Senior UX Researcher and manager. He holds a PhD in experimental psychology from Tufts University.
Gene Beal
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Gene has spent the last 20 years in software development with an emphasis of internet technologies. He has served in various roles of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and regardless of the role takes the time to understand the business needs behind the software he is building. Roles that Gene has filled include Software Engineer, Software Architecture and Dev Ops; in each position Gene has been a contributor, a lead and both.
He has worked on several different startup projects and has brought many of them from concept, to design and into production. Early in his career he was a core, at times the only, software engineer working on a project that reached an IPO offering. His development efforts have included real world applications of web technologies that include environment control systems for the hospitality industry, road safety monitoring/deicing systems, industrial control systems in the aerospace industry and health care applications.
Katie Hauser
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Katie is UX researcher with a background in electrical and software engineering. She uses her multidisciplinary experience to support clients in developing better products for their users. Katie holds a BS in engineering from Harvey Mudd College and an MS in human-centered design and engineering from the University of Washington. Prior to delving deeper into the world of UX, she worked at Intel dreaming up, designing, and building novel computing devices.
Robert Graf
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Robert has over 23 years improving customer experience through research, design, and training. Before becoming an independent consultant with Caelus, LLC in 2014, he worked for 18 years at Microsoft where he specialized in user and design research. Robert has special skills in usability lab research, survey creation and analysis, and scaling agile UX practices to the enterprise.
As a member of Engineering Excellence, he contributed to Microsoft’s UX best practices and presented a variety of UX courses in the US, Europe, and Asia, presented two Engineering Forum sessions that won the Top Ten award, and coached several others to achieve the same. Robert holds a Ph.D. from Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development with a specialization in cognitive-motor behavior, modeling the acquisition of cognitive motor skills in a neural network of his own design, and authoring numerous publications and presentations.
Kent Sullivan
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Kent believes strongly that integrating insights extracted from diverse data sources (design research, market research, telemetry, social networking, etc.) greatly increases the chances of those insights being breakthrough in nature. Kent has spent years fostering deep collaboration among team members and recognizes how hard it is to achieve this in a high-pressure corporate environment.
During his long tenure at Microsoft, it was Kent’s pleasure to work on a wide variety of products, especially Windows 95, where he led the exploratory user research that produced the taskbar and Start menu, as well as the iterative research that helped nail down the details. Since leaving Microsoft recently, Kent has plunged headfirst into the “gig economy” and is partnering with a number of like-minded colleagues on a variety of projects.
Jeanine Spence
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Jeanine has worked on both the engineering side and the design sides; she draws together the vision and the plan to deliver unique experiences.
Jeanine is the author of the Customer Experience Capability Model, a strategic framework teams use to examine their current skills against exemplary examples and define a transformation roadmap. Jeanine received her bachelors in Philosophy from Reed College and her Masters of Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design. Keeping up with the youth, she is involved with Destination Imagination and teaching design thinking at local schools.
Vivian Wilson
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Vivian is a UX Researcher and soon-to-be PhD graduate in Information Science from Florida State University. A passionate advocate for the end user, Vivian approaches each new project with curiosity, empathy, and rigorous attention to detail to provide nuanced insight into user behavior. With previous degrees in Vocal Performance and Musicology, Vivian combined her love for music and user research in her dissertation where she led usability testing of the FSU Allen Music Library’s online catalog to support music information seeking.
With a proven track record of turning user testing observations into actionable insights and distinct product recommendations, Vivian is dedicated to helping clients craft seamless, delightful user experiences for their customers. In addition to her professional and academic research, Vivian has over five years’ experience teaching courses related to technical communication, document design, usability, and accessibility within FSU’s School of Information.
Originally from New Orleans, Vivian currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida with her husband and two cats where she enjoys reading, fishing, and watching Saints football.
Kate Tiskevics
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Kate is a Lead Research Coordinator with a background in college recruitment. She uses her experience in customer service to provide a smooth experience for both the client and participants. Kate holds a BS in International Studies, Spanish, and Art History from Central College.
When not at Caelus, Kate practices and teaches yoga, loves being outdoors, and spends time with her husband and recently added son.
Linda Houry
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Linda is a digital and traditional artist. She enjoys problem solving collaboratively to create visual solutions. Graphics support she provides are (but not limited to) drawing, painting, pen & ink, vector graphics & illustration, portraiture, storyboarding, photo editing, 3D modeling, texturing and 2D animating.
Linda holds a BFA in Biomedical Art from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a CG Certificate from the Gnomon School of Visual Effects.
Laura Bowden
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Laura has been in the field of user experience research for over 20 years, most recently leading teams at Fidelity Investments as the Director of Experience Research Services.
Laura recently moved from downtown Boston to rural Maine, where she runs a holistic, nature-focused event space, an AirBNB, and raises chickens and horses.