Julie Hobson Email and Phone Number

Leading a team toward making websites and technical software more intuitive, useful, and (hopefully) enjoyable.

I graduated with my master's in Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID) with distinction in January 2018.

I defined product requirements for defibrillators according to user and stakeholder needs, regulatory standards, and risk mitigations. In this role, my job was to understand the big picture of: (1) how each product is used, (2) how it is made, and (3) how it integrates into the larger connected system of products. In practice, I often advocated for the user needs amid a sea of engineering priorities. I also designed graphical user journeys and presented published research articles to the clinical/scientific team.Beyond my core product work, I actively sought out opportunities to study our users, including:- Teaching high school students to operate Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) as a volunteer in the Nick of Time program.- Observing paramedics and emergency room doctors during their shifts.- Contributing to focus groups of flight nurses and paramedics interacting with prototype products.- Participating in usability testing for our AED products and several days of emergency simulations on our company campus, playing various roles in the ambulance/hospital setting.**No real patients harmed by my substandard CPR

I was hired to fix a broken process in the engineering department. I interviewed and did extensive observations of the users of the current system to discover the largest sources of inefficiency and error. To solve these issues, I implemented a new database with graphical interface that allows multiple users and limits manual entry. With the new system, the department runs more efficiently and errors have been significantly reduced.

I designed the user interface, software, and hardware of a smart rowing sensor network. In this role, one other engineer and I were the entire product team, so we not only designed and built the embedded system, but also evaluated it with users (rowing coaches and rowers). I conducted very cold and rainy interviews and “in the wild” observations with several rowing clubs, watching them set up, use, and tear down our system over the course of eight months. Being the main contact with our users, I regularly communicated progress and results to stakeholders, advocating for change when users struggled with the design.I also embarked on rowing ethnographies: taking rowing classes and steering an 8-person boat as a coxswain--not an easy feat! I wasn’t going to make the national team anytime soon, but I learned a lot about the pain points of rowing that I took back to the design.