Russ’ job is to set, and continuously communicate, Research Collective’s purpose and strategy. By the way, Research Collective’s purpose is to help companies design useful, usable, desirable, and safe products and systems. Our strategy is to do great work, have fun, and grow slowly, maintaining quality all the while.
Russ has worked for more than 30 years in Human Factors and User Experience in industry (HP, IBM), academics (Ohio State, Northwestern, Arizona State), and consulting (Fitch, Lextant, Research Collective). At ASU, Russ mentored more than 75 MS and PhD theses, and taught courses in Human Factors, Healthcare Human Factors, Human-Computer Interaction, Statistics, Consumer Psychology, and Human Memory. He also served as Department Chair. Now that Russ works full-time at Research Collective, he serves an Emeritus role at ASU, and as Visiting Professor of Human Factors at Northwestern University.
Although his career started in tech, most of Russ’ career has focused on healthcare, beginning in 1997 with the design of a programmer for implantable pacemaker/defibrillators, and tools for beating heart surgery. Nowadays, Russ and the team work on everything from artificial hearts to robotic surgical systems. Russ has published two books and more than 100 journal articles and conference papers. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology (Human Factors emphasis) from New Mexico State University.