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Education

Ph.D.   Human Factors and Applied Cognition.  North Carolina State University, 2018

M.S.    Human Factors and Applied Cognition.  North Carolina State University, 2016

M.S.    Technical Communication.  North Carolina State University, 2011

B.A.    Philosophy. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1993

Work Experience

WELLS FARGO & COMPANY / WINSTON-SALEM, NC (3/19-Present)

User Experience Researcher

Develop research strategies and conduct research studies for Wells Fargo’s Solutions, Operation and Strategy team

  • Usability testing

  • Expert reviews

  • 1:1 interviews

  • Focus groups

User-View, Inc. / Raleigh, NC (5/15-2/19)

User Experience Researcher, Consultant

Worked with other User-View UX consultants on a project basis to conduct UX testing on a variety of products for various clients.  Projects included the evaluation of:

  • Electronic medical devices

  • Online electronic health records

  • Smart phone apps

  • Websites        

Department of Pyschology / North Carolina State University (8/11-5/18)

Ph.D. Graduate Researcher, Human Factors & Applied Cognition

  • Developed and implemented original research in pursuit of interim M.S. (5/16) and Ph.D. in Human Factors & Applied Cognition (5/18)

  • Primary Instructor, PSY 410 Learning and Motivation: 8/12 – 12/14

  • Graduate Teaching Assistant: 8/11 – 5/12

    • PSY 410 Learning and Motivation (Fall 2011)

    • PSY 400 Perception (Spring 2012)

IBM / Research Triangle Park, NC (3/08-8/11)

Information Developer (Co-op), ABSM Software Group

  • Created documentation for the deployment, use, and support of IBM’s TADDM and NetView for z/OS business systems management software

  • Collaborated with systems and development staff to collect, interpret, and develop technical information into end-user deliverables including online user guides, installation manuals, and demonstration videos

  • Created modular, single-source documentation using IBM’s ID Workbench suite of development tools, including DITA-based, Arbortext Editor software

  • Created multimedia instructional demo(s) of a NetView workload distribution scenario as part of Master’s thesis/capstone project

College of Humanities and Social Science / North Carolina State University (8/07-5/11)

M.S. Graduate Student, Technical Communication

  • Earned M.S. (May, 2011) in Technical Communication

  • Began information development co-op at IBM described above

  • Began usability/user experience studies as part of class, Usability for the Technical Communicator

Pentair Water Pool And Spa / Sanford, NC (1/06-2/08)

Technical Writer, New Product Development Group

  • Created and edited end-user product manuals, user guides, and installation manuals for the world's largest manufacturer of swimming pool equipment and accessories

  • Worked with new product development engineers to update existing documents and to document new features

  • Operated within the protocols of Pentair’s manufacturing Product Change Order process

Williams Lea at Bain & Company / New York, NY (2/04–3/05)

Presentations Specialist

  • Created client and in-house presentations for partners and consultants at international strategy consulting firm Bain & Company.

  • Manipulated digital images (Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator) for graphics in multimedia presentations.

  • Created numerous in-house posters and fliers to advertise corporate events

Deutsche Bank / New York, NY (1/99–1/04)

Presentations Specialist, Presentations Group

  • Created client presentations for investment bankers using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

  • Tailored existing presentation templates to bankers’ specifications

  • Re-created client logos in Corel Draw9 for incorporation in presentations

Home Box Office / New York, NY (3/97 – 1/98)

Marketing Coordinator, Subscriber Marketing:  1/98 – 1/99

  • Helped plan, implement and evaluate fully integrated, HBO-managed marketing campaigns.

  • Projects included development of affiliate marketing programs and on-air promotions

Project Coordinator, Creative Services (Print Services): 3/97 – 1/98

  • Coordinated the production of marketing materials for in-house HBO clients. Tactics included trade and consumer advertisements and direct mail

FerrellCalvillo Communications, Inc. / New York, NY (4/96–3/97)

Assistant Account Executive

  • Worked with clients to create print and television advertising copy platforms and to develop timetables and budgets for those projects. Communicated client needs/concerns to producers during production

  • Reviewed producers’ reels to assist in assembly of creative teams for production of television ads. Assisted in talent casting for both print and television ads

  • Coordinated the distribution of ad materials to publications and networks

Office Of The Kings County District Attorney / Brooklyn, NY (3/94–4/96)

Paralegal

  • Conducted legal research to prepare cases for trial including homicides, narcotics, sex crimes, robberies and assaults. Investigated leads to secure crucial witness testimony and arranged for testimony of civilian witnesses and police. Assisted in the preparation and analysis of forensic evidence

United States Army (8/86–8/90)

Sergeant, Electronic Warfare / Signal Intelligence Analyst, Augsburg, Germany

  • Analyzed intercepted Russian voice communications and prepared intelligence reports for distribution to the National Security Agency and other international intelligence agencies

UX/CX projects and research

Selected wells fargo projects

Projects completed or in progress as UX researcher for Wells Fargo’s Solutions, Operation and Strategy team (3/19 - Present)

Deployment of new HR management system

Discovery and definition of users and use environments for the deployment of new intranet service layer supporting the measurement and management of Wells Fargo HR activities and services

  • User personas

  • User journey maps

  • “Moments that matter” scenarios

Selected User-View projects

Projects completed as UX researcher/consultant for Raleigh-based usability firm User-View (5/15 – 2/19)

Electronic Health Record 

Summative usability testing of electronic health record software as part of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's (ONC) MU3 certification process

  • Five hundred seventy-six (576) participants took part in the testing of twelve (12) EHRs from multiple vendors

  • Participants included physicians, nurses, registration specialists, and configuration specialists

  • Products tested included ambulatory, acute, and module EHRs

  • Test scenarios included multiple subtasks

Wearable seizure monitoring device

Summative usability test on seizure monitoring and alerting hardware developed by a startup technology firm (NDA binding) specializing in the development of portable seizure monitoring technology

  • Participants: sufferers of generalized tonic-clonic seizures

  • Measures assessed: successful task completion, error rate

  • Results: improvements in usability over earlier designs

  • Summative acceptance criterion achieved for FDA approval (100% of participants were able to complete each task without use errors that led to unacceptable risk of harm.)

Mobile banking app

Verification testing of mobile banking application developed by a major regional bank (NDA binding)

  • Android and iOS versions

  • Client employed usability assessments in a program of iterative design

  • Assessments included exploratory, summative, and verification

  • Participants: bank customers

  • Measures assessed: successful task completion, error rate

  • Results: Confirmed that 70 percent of participants met successful completion criteria. Exposed remaining usability deficiencies in time for minor modifications before commercial release

Electronic Immunization Reconciliation Software 

Summative usability test on prototypes of immunization reconciliation software and vaccine inventory management software in development by a software firm (NDA binding) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Software linked sources of immunization history (patient EHRs, state-level immunization repositories, etc.) and reconciled them in central database

  • Participants: Healthcare providers including M.D.s, Nurses, and Nurse Practitioners

  • Measures assessed: successful task completion, SUS

  • Results: Improvements in usability over earlier designs. Software attained benchmarks for approval from federal authorities to move to next phase of development

Mall Study

“Quick and dirty” usability test conducted on five versions of television ads for a major regional bank (NDA binding) 

  • Participants: Customers at large shopping mall

  • Measure assessed: Net Promoter Scores (NPS)

  • Results: NPS scores identified a less expensive version of ad as having likability scores similar to more expensive option

Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Effect of Aesthetics on Perceived Usability (Fall 2016-Spring 2018) 

North Carolina State University – Doctoral Dissertation

Usability experiment examining whether users’ judgments of usability and aesthetics might change with their continued experience with a system.

  • Hypothesized that 1) aesthetics contribute disproportionately to judgments of usability, and that 2) the influence of aesthetics on judgments of usability diminishes with continued use and experience

  • Developed four versions of a patient portal website:

    • High Aesthetics High Usability, High Aesthetics Low Usability, Low Aesthetics High Usability, Low Aesthetics Low Usability

    • Participants performed three online tasks on each of the four versions of the website

      • Gauged users' perceptions of usability (SUS) and aesthetics (Lavie and Tractinsky’s (2004) classical and expressive instrument, Moshagen and Thielsch’s (2010, 2013) VisAWI-S tool) and recorded performance measures

  • Results provided very limited support for the hypotheses

    • Repeated measures ANOVAs failed to show an effect of aesthetics on users’ judgments of usability

    • Results suggested that SUS ratings were unaffected by aesthetics

    • RMANOVAs showed a significant effect of observation and usability, rather than aesthetics, on users’ judgments of usability

Laying Out Information Displays Based On The Semantic Relatedness of Display Elements (Spring 2014-FALL 2016)

North Carolina State University – M.S. Thesis

Usability experiment building on findings from Ingredients Are Found Faster When Placed Adjacent to the Nutrition Facts Label.  Presented at Human Factors and Ergonomics Society International Annual Meeting, September 2016.

  • Investigated whether arranging elements according to their semantic relatedness could affect user performance

    • Identified twelve elements commonly found on food item packaging

    • Created measure of semantic relatedness between all elements by having participants rate perceived similarity of pairs of items on a scale from 0-10

    • Used ratings to generate multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) model, a 2-D geometric configuration of all twelve elements reflecting their semantic relatedness

    • Created three layouts based on MDS models

      • Layout 1: elements mapped to MDS solution

      • Layout 2: elements mapped in reverse of MDS solution

      • Layout 3: elements arranged randomly

    • Measured participants’ response times on tasks performed on all three layouts

    • Analyses showed that performance is better on layouts on which elements are arranged according to MDS structure (both mapped to and in reverse of MDS solution) than on layouts on which elements have been arranged randomly

Improving Food Labels for Health and Safety:  Effects of Ingredients List Placement on Search Time (Spring 2015)

North Carolina State University

Usability experiment examining whether results observed in Ingredients Are Found Faster When Placed Adjacent to the Nutrition Facts Label could be explained by an alternative hypothesis.  Presented at Human Factors and Ergonomics Society International Annual Meeting, September 2016.

  • Created thirty versions of Hall’s Defense cough drop package in which the location of the ingredients list relative to the nutrition facts panel was systematically manipulated

  • Employed a control element in the same positions as the ingredients list relative to the nutrition facts panel to investigate whether any response time advantage transferred to other layout items

  • Analyses suggested that response time was faster when the ingredients list was placed near the Nutrition Facts Panel, as well as in the top two thirds of the layout

Ingredients Are Found Faster When Placed Adjacent to the Nutrition Facts Label (Fall 2012)

North Carolina State University

Usability experiment exploring whether placing a list of ingredients near the nutrition facts panel on a common food item package label would affect user speed in locating the ingredients.  Presented at Human Factors and Ergonomics Society International Annual Meeting, October 2015.

  • Created four versions of an ecologically valid layout of a Hall’s Defense cough drop package with the ingredients list located in a different location relative to the nutrition facts panel on each version

  • Measured participants’ response times in finding the ingredients list

  • Response time was significantly faster when the ingredients list was in close proximity to the nutrition facts panel

Effects of Graph Backgrounds on Visual Search (Spring 2015)

North Carolina State University

Usability experiment examining Tufte’s (1983) assertion that graphical embellishments that don’t represent data impede search in graphs

  • Hypothesized that graph and graph background are processed in parallel, and that non-data graphical embellishments in the graph background could assist search if the background and a search target have different features

    • Target might be easier to find because of a “pop out” effect

  • Created layouts in which graphs were superimposed over backgrounds that contained graphical elements that did not represent data

    • Graph types were either line graphs or bar, with line graphs employing circular data indicators and bar graphs employing rectangular data indicators

    • Backgrounds consisted of graphical elements that resembled either the circular data indicators of the line graph, or the rectangular data indicators of the bar graph

  • Participants performed tasks using the line and bar graphs

    • Based on an earlier study with fewer backgrounds and graphs, we hypothesized that speed and accuracy would improve on layouts where the background dd not resemble the data indicators of the graph because a pop-out effect would assist the search for the data indicators

  • Result did not support hypothesis

    • No pop out effect was observed in this follow-up study

    • Performance was negatively affected by backgrounds regardless of whether or not the background elements resembled the graph indicator

Performance Assessment Toolbox- http://hfmethods.co.nf (Fall 2014)

North Carolina State University

Online educational resource to be used as a teaching tool for Human Factors researchers and practitioners

  • Provides illustration of mental models associated with each performance assessment technique

  • Uses include shaping individual mental models of assessment techniques into a uniform team model to speed the development cycle timeline

  • Includes implementation examples for each technique covering a broad base of subject

Walking as a Target Acquisition Movement (Fall 2011–Spring 2014)

North Carolina State University

Experiment exploring whether Fitts’ Law applies to walking

  • Measured subjects’ movement times in tasks requiring them to walk from a starting point to targets on the ground of varying size and at varying distances

  • Examined whether movement times were a function of Distance/Target Size, or a linear function of index of difficulty

  • Determined that there is weak fit between Fitts’ Law and walking tasks

Usability of Quick Start Manual (Fall 2009)

North Carolina State University

Explored the usability of Pentax SLR digital camera quick start manual as part of PSY 540 Overview of Human Factors at NCSU

  • Performed task analyses of several basic camera functions

  • Performed heuristic evaluation using Nielsen’s (2008) usability guidelines

  • Created two prototypes of quick start manuals based on findings and recommendations from the heuristic evaluation

  • Conducted usability tests on existing quick start manual as well as the two prototypes

    • Recorded reaction time and qualitative data to determine ease of use, visibility, and interpret results

      • Prototypes outperformed existing quick start manual

  • Presented results and recommended improvements to current camera quick start manual

Usability of Picasa Photo sharing Application (Fall 2009)

North Carolina State University

Summative usability study of Picasa image organizing application in Introduction to Usability class at NCSU.  Steps included development of: 

  • Test plan

  • User pre-test questionnaire

  • Data collections forms

  • Debriefing guide

  • Orientation script

Also, conducted test sessions, administered post-test questionnaire/debriefing, compiled final test report and recommendations.        

Jing Usability Study (Fall 2009)

North Carolina State University

Formative user study of Jing screen capture software in Introduction to Usability class at NCSU.  Examined the effectiveness of high-level interface element of the Jing software, the unique “sun” launch icon.  Posed the following research questions:

  • Did sun interface support or impede user workflows?

  • How did users conceive of and think about using product?

  • Did interface facilitate “walk up and use”

    • Results showed that users expressed a preference for conventional desktop icon over unique sun icon

Publications

Grishin, J. & Gillan, D.J. (2019). Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Effect of Aesthetics on Perceived Usability Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 14, Issue 2.

Mauney J, Barnes J, Clarke D, Furlough C, Orrick E, Brooks T, Brown M, Zielinska O, Grishin J. (2017, June). Observed Usage Errors During Meaningful-Use Stage 3 Safety-Enhanced Design Summative Testing. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care (Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 84-88). Sage India: New Delhi, India: SAGE Publications.

Grishin, J. & Gillan, D.J. (2016) Structure Matters: Effects of Semantic Relatedness and Proximity on Consumer Search and Integration Tasks, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 60th Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. 2016

Grishin, J. & Wogalter, M. (2016) Improving Food Labels for Health and Safety:  Effects of Ingredients List Placement on Search Time, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 60th Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. 2016

Grishin, J., Walkington, W., & Wogalter, M. (2015) Ingredients Are Found Faster When Placed Adjacent to the Nutrition Facts Label, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 59th Annual Meeting. Los Angeles, CA 2015

Teaching Experience 

North Carolina State University (Fall 2012 – Spring 2015)

Primary Instructor, PSY 410 Learning and Motivation, 6 semesters, 2 summer school sessions

  • Created syllabus

  • Developed all lecture materials and supplemental activities

  • Provided feedback, including graded and ungraded assignments

  • Maintained course website including access to additional sources of HFE related topics

North Carolina State University (Spring 2012)

Teaching Assistant, PSY 410 Learning and Motivation

North Carolina State University (Fall 2011)

Teaching Assistant, PSY 400 Perception

    

Course Work (Fall 2011 – Spring  2016)

  • Usability for the Technical Communicator

  • Cognitive Processes

  • Skill Acquisition and Training

  • Special Topics (Human Factors in System Design)

  • Visual Perception

  • Ergonomic Performance and Assessment

  • Organizational Psychology

  • Training Research

  • Innovation and Technology

  • Physiological Psychology

  • Learning Analytics for Digital Age

  • Psychometrics

  • Advanced Social Psychology

  • Action Research

  • Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods

  • Univariate and ANOVA (Statistics)

  • Multivariate and Regression (Statistics)

  • Multilevel Modeling (Statistics)