Experience:

Laura's most recent work explores collaboration, particularly in the context of command and control in both military and crisis management settings. Before joining UDRI, she worked for Klein Associates, where she contributed to the development of a set of applied cognitive task analysis methods (ACTA) for use by practitioners, as well as the design of techniques to train others in conducting cognitive task analysis. She has extensive experience conducting cognitive task analysis across a broad range of domains, including critical care nursing, air campaign planning, weapons directing, and consumer decision making. She has conducted more than 20 cognitive task analysis workshops for human factors professionals and students, and currently teaches a course on cognitive task analysis for graduate students in the Human Factors Psychology Program at the University of Dayton.  She has authored numerous reports, articles, and book chapters on related topics, including interview techniques, knowledge representation, and team decision making.

In addition to her research focusing on methods, Laura has worked as a senior user interface designer, applying findings from cognitive task analysis to design. She has worked in the medical device industry as a member of multidisciplinary work teams made up of software designers, mechanical engineers, marketing representatives, and industrial engineers. Laura has experience conducting multinational usability testing for medical devices, refining interface elements of existing products to reduce error and improve customer satisfaction, as well as designing new, first-of-a-kind interface elements for future ultrasound platforms.

Education:

M.A., Experiment Psychology and Human Factors, University of Dayton, 1995