Wirfs-Brock holds a B.A. in computer and information science and psychology from the University of Oregon.[1] She worked at Tektronix for 15 years as a software engineer before moving on to Instantiations (founded by her husband Allen Wirfs-Brock), which was acquired by Digitalk which merged with Parc Place Systems to become ParcPlace-Digitalk in 1995. She was the Chief Technologist for the professional services organization of a Smalltalk language vendor.
She holds a U.S. Patent #4,635,049 "Apparatus for Presenting Image Information for Display Graphically" together with Warren Dodge.
She wrote about object role stereotypes in 1992 in a Smalltalk Report article and this influenced the UML notion of stereotypes. Her invention of the conversational (two-column) form of use cases was then popularized by Larry Constantine. Most of the more recent "driven" design approaches acknowledge their roots and the influence of RDD, of which class-responsibility-collaboration cards are one popular technique. She was the design columnist for IEEE Software until December 2009.
Bibliography
Designing Object-Oriented Software, with Brian Wilkerson and Lauren Wiener, Prentice-Hall, 1990, ISBN0-13-629825-7
Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations, with Alan McKean. Addison-Wesley, 2003, ISBN0-201-37943-0
