Aarhus Universitets segl

Marie Louise Møller

What is your workplace and job title?

I work at Design Psychology as a Consultant in Behavioural Psychology and Human Factors.
 

What are two or three examples of daily tasks?

Some examples of daily tasks are:

1) Usability Tests: Collecting insights about how people use and understand products

One of my main tasks is to run mixed-methods research studies, often in the form of a usability test. At the beginning of such a task, I will meet with our clients to determine where they are in their design process and which questions the study needs to answer. Then, my colleagues and I design the study. For example, we often test prototypes of new medical devices, where we will investigate whether doctors or patients can use the prototype safely and effectively. If the user makes any errors, we analyse their behaviour to determine why the error occurred, and based on the analysis, we present recommendations for how our client can change their design to make their device safer and easier to use.

2) Expert Reviews: Improving design using expert knowledge

Another task I often have is to review a design to identify potential usability issues based on what we know about human perception, cognition, and behaviour. An example could be analysing a graphical user interface to uncover whether something will be difficult for the user to see, understand, or do. Based on this analysis, I present recommendations for how the client can update their design to be more user-friendly.

3) Teaching courses and facilitating workshops

At Design Psychology, we also have courses wherein we teach other professionals how to use some of the tools we use in our consultancy. Therefore, my day often consists of teaching courses or facilitating workshops with themes related to, for instance, experimental methods or how to apply knowledge about human cognition and perception to improve design.


What are the two or three main things you got from Cognitive Science?

Some of the primary skills and knowledge from Cognitive Science that I use in my everyday work are:

1) Knowledge about human perception, cognition, communication, and behaviour, which I actively use when teaching courses or reviewing design. When analysing a user’s behaviour after a usability test, I also use knowledge about perception, attention, decision making and so on to ensure we design user-friendly and engaging products.

2) Practical experience with designing research studies and questionnaires, analysing and visualising data (e.g., in R or Python), and presenting findings from research studies.

3) General skills such as managing several projects simultaneously and quickly gathering large amounts of knowledge on complicated topics.