Psychology was my major when I applied to college, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I liked statistics, philosophy, and liberal arts, but what could you do with a Psychology degree? My first ‘Aha moment’ came when I took a year-long ‘Experimental Psychology’ course in my second year in college. The course introduced me to the scientific method, establishing hypotheses, and creating and executing a research plan.
I learned the fundamentals of how to plan, conduct, and document research related to vision, memory, and various behavioral principles.
That year-long course introduced me to the importance of conducting valid, reliable, and repeatable research and to avoid bias and confounding in designing and executing studies. My professor liked what I was doing and asked me to become a lab assistant to conduct research in the field of visual perception. I accepted. That job was the reason that I started to explore Cognitive Psychology as a career.
I conducted research in the Psychology lab while I completed my BA, and met my wife in the lab (she had a part-time job scheduling and coordinating research studies). I went on to graduate school to continue my focus on depth and motion perception. My graduate advisor offered me jobs as his research assistant and his teaching assistant for Experimental Design courses. I co-authored a few research studies, published in a psychology journal, and served as a reviewer for a “Depth Perception through Motion” book that my thesis advisor was writing. Another grad student and I tag-teamed teaching continuing education courses at a local community college, focusing on visual illusions, decision-making, and parapsychology (I did not teach that module). Good stuff, I thought – I’m going to be a college professor!!
I’m about to start my dissertation research in perceptual psychology) and I see this posting for a year-long research fellowship in Minneapolis, focusing on conducting APPLIED research. I’d be applying cognition and research skills to address problems in the real world. Success!! I was one of three graduate students awarded a fellowship in “Man-Machine Sciences”. My wife and I packed the car with all our worldly possessions and we left the comfort and security of grad school in California for a year of real-world experience in the upper Midwest. The year was another ‘Aha moment’. I met applied psychologists for the first time and conducted some interesting research. I conducted studies exploring options for optimizing keyboard design for typing speed and accuracy. I conducted interviews with physicians to aid in developing algorithms for diagnosing breast cancer using thermography. (Thermograms detect infrared rays to show patterns of body temperature.)
The research fellowship got me thinking about a career in “Human Factors”. I became interested in designing and testing intuitive and easy to use hardware instead of conducting “pure” research to understand the physiology and psychology of vision. I returned to my final year of grad school to conduct my dissertation and I taught an undergraduate course called “Introduction to Human Factors.” (I later learned that two students continued to grad school and ended up in user experience careers.)
I loved teaching, but chose a career in Industry where I could apply research methodologies to real-world problems. I liked research that resulted in interfaces that could be seen, felt and used. I accepted a job with a multinational technology company to design and conduct research related to the usability of hardware used in banking. Because of my background in vision, I conducted research on the readability, legibility, and privacy of displays used in banks and in walk-up and drive-up ATMs. I tested a pen that recognized and authenticated individuals based on the biometric properties of their signature. I provided design recommendations to more easily replace components in printers and client servers that previously required a call to a technician. Fun stuff, but we generally could not evaluate the final product until they were designed, ‘hard tooled’, and nearly ready for release. This was frustrating – as usability problems had to be pretty big to stop a product from release. We wanted to get ahead of the curve and test earlier in the design process. Thirty years ago, printers displayed their status using a two character LCD display. Users had to remember – or look up – what the code meant. We wanted a larger 16 character display so that words could be displayed. More expensive – but more effective and usable. Prototyping was coming into vogue, so we started prototyping printer panels for display on a touch panel to test concepts BEFORE they were built. The developers had never seen this approach and were surprised. The resultant test results documented the improved usability. Getting involved in design and prototyping, along with the introduction of iterative usability testing, was another “Aha moment” and career highlight.
Usability started to become a key differentiating factor in the industry and began to be measured and integrated into the development cycle. At the same time, the economy was taking a downturn, and internal funding for design and testing specialized software began to decline. One of our banking clients approached my department for usability support of a large-scale evolutionary design effort. I agreed to assist and flew to a bank in Boston weekly to work with business leads, designers, and developers. The collaborative design and research effort resulted in the release of a large and easy to use software platform used by Customer Service Representatives – one of the first GUI banking platforms!! This year-long client-facing engagement positioned me for a career as an industry consultant, just as consulting services began to take off. (Another highlight.)
I became part of a new consulting services organization (still with my original employer) and our department grew with the industry. Initially, our services were requested by companies when system usability was very poor and customers in the field were complaining loud enough to draw attention. We conducted heuristics reviews to identify the potential causes of problems, provided design recommendations, and tested the interface as the designs were updated. Our role and influence expanded when we crafted capabilities to focus on earlier stages of design, including requirements gathering, needs analysis, and contextual inquiries of how work was conducted to better understand the needs of the user.
We created iterative design, prototyping, and usability evaluation techniques to more rapidly evolve and validate the design.
As the Practice grew, I took on a management role, tasked with providing career and skills development guidance, along with engagement and performance oversight. I accepted the role under the condition that I continue to maintain a client-facing consulting services role. I did not want to lose touch with technology and industry trends. I have since become the Practice lead of this Research and Insights Practice, supporting research needs to clients in various industries and sectors across the country. Development is increasingly incorporating methodologies such as agile software development to drive flexible and continuous improvement. Design teams are using solution-focused and user-centered methodologies such as Design Thinking to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible. User research is integrated in these methodologies and continues to be a differentiator and a critical path to success. I still enjoy the hands-on research and the discovery and insights that help guide the incorporation of ever-changing technology in new and novel ways (and still with my original employer).
Some books that have been influencers:
- Don’t make Me think (Steve Krug)
- Cost justifying Usability (Bias & Mayhew)
- Jakob Nielsen – Designing Web Usability
- The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
- Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
- Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research (Jeff Sauro & James R Lewis)