Beth Loring, MS, CHFP

Career

Beth Loring, Director of the Center, has nearly twenty years of experience consulting on product design and usability. She has expertise in the areas of user needs assessment, user interface design, usability evaluation methods, and ergonomics. She has designed and conducted usability tests of consumer electronics, web sites, software and medical devices. Beth has also been a visiting faculty member in Bentley’s Information Design and Corporate Communications department since 2001.

Before joining Bentley, Beth was a Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research, and before that she spent five years as the human factors team leader at IDEO Product Development in Boston. In both positions, Beth worked on the design and evaluation of a wide array of products, including client-server software, insulin injectors, two-way radios, hospital communications systems, digital cameras, vehicle navigation systems, microchip manufacturing systems, and home networked technologies. She is also familiar with the FDA and AAMI human factors standards for medical products, and has presented tutorials on FDA compliance.

Beth’s web experience includes usability testing and expert reviews of a wide variety of sites in the banking, e-commerce, mortgage, educational, and business-to-business industries.

Beth holds an M.S. in Engineering Design from Tufts University and is a Certified Human Factors Professional. She has published more than fifteen papers on usability and is coauthor of a case study in “Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Requirements” (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2005). She has received design awards from IDEA/Business Week and ID Magazine. Beth is past chair of both the New England Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Greater Boston SIGCHI.

Partial Client List:

Amtrak, Arnold Worldwide, Baxter Healthcare, Bose, Cabot, Cisco, Electrolux, Eli Lily, Fannie Mae, Hewlett Packard, IDEXX, Kodak, Liberty Mutual, Lifeline, MassMutual, McKesson, Microsoft, Monster, Motorola, National Swimming Pool Foundation, Product Genesis, Polaroid, Ricoh, Sarns Medical, Samsung Electronics, SpaceTec, Staples, Sunbeam, Symantec, Teradyne, US Air Force, US FDA, and Volkswagen.