HF/E Practitioners: Shared Experiences from Industry

Abstract

There are many challenges that researchers face when adapting from academic backgrounds to industry. How do we train newcomers to this field to focus on goals in context of their business’s needs? How do we ensure impact early in their career? How do we learn to look beyond the process, methods, mindset, and story-telling, to delivering on corporations’ anticipated needs? What are the challenges when mandating practitioners’ research to translate to actionable items? How do practitioners drive impact that brings the desired value to their corporations? How does one encourage user experience (UX) as an integral process within corporations’ development plans? This panel of practitioners will share the trials and tribulations they have encountered while successfully navigating their respective Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) careers. This panel represents peers with diverse experiences from careers in technology, product design, human-computer interfaces (HCI), medical devices, usability testing, and human factors research.