Robin Langerak
It’s convenient when you can find a career in the city where you are completing your PhD. Such was the case for Robin Langerak, who began working at IBM in their Ottawa Studio while completing her doctorate in Cognitive Psychology at Carleton University. She has now been there more than a year, working as a Design Researcher on a suite of business intelligence software tools designed and developed by the Ottawa product team.
Robin provides design recommendations that will help improve the user experience for this software. That involves everything from problem definition to study design and data collection to synthesis and communication of research findings. Psychology has prepared her for all of this in a big way. She says,
“Data collection, storage, and analysis methods that I learned in training are invaluable at my job. I also rely on the understanding of human thought and motivation that I studied in school as well as the techniques I learned to check my bias and measure constructs as accurately as possible.“
The best thing about her job?
“I get to do a little bit of everything I loved about running my own research studies as a psychology graduate student in a fast-paced, high impact environment.“
Robin Langerak