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Laura Chessman is a user-centered design and strategy professional with experience in both industry and government settings. While leading efforts to assess and improve the usability of systems ranging from complex software for researchers and engineers to informational systems for broad audiences, Laura has also worked within organizations to integrate user-centered design methodologies into software development processes for long term successes in improving system usability.

Laura has led multiple design and usability projects for clients such as the National Cancer Institute and American Red Cross, and has managed the design and usability efforts for multiple complex software products in private industry. Laura has considerable experience designing for and assessing the usability of complex systems used in highly specialized fields such as science and engineering. Laura has served as vice president of the DC Metro Chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association (formerly UPA, now UXPA). She has a M.S. in Information Science from the University of North Carolina.

Insights from Laura

Presentation

Guiding Users Towards Action: Empowering Decisions Through Effective Data Design

UXPA International Conference, Baltimore, MD – September 1, 2021

Lisa Battle, Laura Chessman

Good design can help users quickly grasp a situation, make better decisions, and take productive actions. In this session, we provide a framework that describes a progressive evolution of data displays and actions, and share a broad range of examples, from consumer products to enterprise web applications, to discuss ways to design effective data displays and integrate actions.

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Presentation

Simplicity in Web Application Design

User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) Conference, San Diego, CA - June 23, 2015

Lisa Battle, Laura Chessman

Simplicity is one of the most important principles of design. But, realistically, simplicity isn’t always simple. This talk covers what to try when removing functionality or features isn’t an option, provides practical questions to ask when deciding whether and how to simplify an application, and summarizes proven design techniques to use when simplifying applications.

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Presentation

Keeping the Vision Alive: UX Leadership in Long-Term Projects

User Focus, the UXPA DC Chapter conference in Washington, DC – October 17, 2014

Lisa Battle, Laura Chessman

As UX practitioners, we often face challenges “keeping the vision alive” as projects get caught up in constraints, details, and politics. But we cannot let those things derail us or take things too far from that solid, long-term vision. In this talk, we discuss strategies and practical techniques to help teams stay focused on meeting long-term goals, while addressing short-term needs and facing the circumstances and challenges that arise through the design and implementation process. Topics include: maintaining the rationale behind “blue-sky” thinking, methods for questioning constraints to get to innovative ideas, working with interim designs as intermediate steps to the final vision, and creating shared understanding and buy-in across the team for the long-term vision.

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Presentation

Designing Configurable and Customizable Applications

User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) Conference, Las Vegas, NV – June 5, 2012

Lisa Battle, Laura Chessman

In complex applications, such as claims processing, learning management, scheduling systems, engineering software, and other such tools, it is common to provide flexibility to modify the user interface (and the underlying processing) to meet widely varying needs, rather than assuming that one size fits all. When working on the user experience design for such products, we need to ensure that it is easy for clients or users to configure the product as they wish, and be mindful of impacts on the overall user experience.

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