IPSWICH, Mass. — September 16, 2014 — EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) has named Kate Lawrence Vice President, User Research. Lawrence leads the User Research Team and the research activities that enable EBSCO to gain user insight and improve the customer experience across the portfolio of EBSCO products.
Lawrence has been a User Experience (UX) practitioner for more than 20 years, starting her career in health care designing online order entry systems for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, then moving into online travel, where she worked in User Experience at TripAdvisor and SilverRail Technologies.
Since 2011, Lawrence and her team at EBSCO have watched thousands of users interact with EBSCO products, mobile devices, websites and interface designs, discovering insights that drive improvements to products, services and processes. Lawrence says letting users tell their stories informs product development and challenges assumptions. “Listening to customers and users is a transformative experience. What we confirm with every study is how critical it is to bring customer and user feedback into the product development cycle, as early as possible. The other advantage is that the insights we gain about the larger picture of library usage can benefit the library community in ways we never considered.”
Lawrence contributes to EBSCO’s blog posting articles about user research at EBSCO and larger issues related to user research. Her User Research team will be speaking during EBSCO’s Lively Lunch at The Charleston Conference on November 6th and Lawrence will take part in a panel discussion at Charleston. The session, Owning the Discovery Experience for Your Patrons, will be held on Thursday, November 6th at 3:15-4:00 pm.
Lawrence is also is a member of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) and an active presenter in the Boston and national UX community.
About EBSCO Information ServicesEBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 6,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 600,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com
