Beth is a Certified Human Factors Professional with over 35 years’ experience in product design and usability, having expertise in user requirements, ergonomics, user interface design, and usability testing. She is the founder and Principal Consultant at Loring Human Factors, a consultancy focused primarily on the healthcare industry. In addition to serving as CEO, Beth helps clients develop their usability engineering strategy and advises them on their FDA and CE Mark regulatory submissions.

Beth holds an M.S. in Engineering Design and a B.S. in Engineering Psychology from Tufts University. She is a member of the AAMI Human Factors Standards Committee and co-author of the book, Moderating Usability Tests: Principles and Practices for Interacting with Joe Dumas. She is a past board member of Boston UXPA, and when she was director of the UX Center at Bentley University, worked as co-host of that organization’s annual conference.

Beth is well-versed in the specialized type of usability testing known in the medical industry as human factors validation testing (or summative testing). This type of testing is prescribed by the U.S. FDA and must be conducted under specific conditions with a minimum of 15 participants from each user group. As such, it is much different from the typical usability testing familiar to most members of UXPA.