Pearson Names K-12 Usability Advisory Board To Further Efficacy Research
Independent Experts to Inform New Practices in Research and Evaluation
January 7, 2013. Chandler, AZ. At its iDEA Innovation Center in Chandler, AZ, Pearson announced today the appointment of a panel of recognized experts to a new Usability Advisory Board which will influence the development and evaluation of next generation digital instructional programs.
The three Advisory Board members are:
- Jeff Sauro, founding principal of Measuring Usability LLC, providing statistics and usability consulting to Fortune 1000 companies. He is author of numerous journal articles and books on statistics and the user-experience. A Six-Sigma trained statistical analyst and pioneer in quantifying the user experience, he specializes in making statistical concepts understandable and actionable. Sauro received his masters degree in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford University with a concentration in statistical concepts.
- Whitney Quesenbery, a user experience researcher whose projects include work for the National Cancer Institute (US), The Open University (UK) and IEEE (worldwide). She has served on two US government advisory committees, is a past president of the Usability Professionals’ Association International, board member of the Center for Plain Language, and a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communications. Quesenbery is the author, with Kevin Brooks, of Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design.
- Dr. Kathryn Summers, a faculty member at the University of Baltimore teaches user research, usability testing, and interaction design for a master’s program in Interaction Design and Information Architecture. Along with projects for large corporations, her work includes research about navigation, on-line reading comprehension, and information design. She speaks at international research conferences, and has published widely in industry journals.
Shawn Mahoney, Pearson’s Vice President of Design Research and Evaluation, said the appointment of the Advisory Board supports Pearson’s global commitment to ensuring efficacy in education. “We are committed to helping people make progress in people’s lives through learning. Our efficacy goals keep us focused on optimizing the measurable impacts on learning of our K-12 solutions.” She added, “These esteemed authorities on usability and research will participate in iterative design and usability research to not only improve the user experience, but allow us to build a research base focused on outcomes.”
Mahoney said the board was established as part of one of the iDEA Innovation Center’s founding principles, “absorptive capacity,” which she defined as the ability of an enterprise to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to innovative ends. She noted that the Advisory Board members will be integrally involved in the design of research studies to support the development of digital curriculum programs.
For more information, visit: www.pearsoned.com/usability.
Contact: kate.miller@pearson.com – 1.800.745.8489
About Pearson School Product Design Research and Evaluation
The School Product Design Research and Evaluation team primarily supports the K-12 Pearson School division by providing research that spans the product lifecycle, including market research, usability and academic/efficacy research.
About Pearson School Product Design Research and Evaluation
The School Product Design Research and Evaluation team primarily supports the K-12 Pearson School division by providing research that spans the product lifecycle, including market research, usability and academic/efficacy research.
