Presenter

Keith S. Karn, PhD is the founder and principal consultant of Human Factors in Context LLC, a consulting firm offering user research, human factors engineering, and physical/digital user experience architecture. Keith has been steeped in human-centered design since strapping himself into the ejection seat of a supersonic airplane during his first human factors job in the early 1980s. Since then, he has trekked across mountains, slogged through underground coal mines, and trailed ER docs, all in the pursuit of user research to fuel product innovation. Before starting Human Factors in Context, he led user research and design teams at Bresslergroup, Design Science, Xerox, and Kodak. He attended Penn State, North Carolina State, and the University of Rochester and holds degrees in both Industrial Engineering and Experimental Psychology (PhD). He taught human factors and human-computer interaction for many years as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rochester and briefly as a full-time visiting faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has published 19 peer-reviewed papers, four book chapters, and has 15 utility patents.