Join us for a User Experience Design Presidential Dream Course Lecture with Dr. Diana Bairaktarova. Dr. Bairaktarova is a previous faculty member of AME and is currently an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech in the College of Engineering’s Department of Engineering Education. Her seminar is titled, The User Experience Evolution: Empathy in Engineering Design Practice. The seminar is Thursday, October 29, 2015 at 9:00am in the Hitachi Conference Room, 214 Felgar Hall. The lecture is open to the public.

Abstract: Understanding user needs and customer preferences is critical to the design process. The engineering design community has produced various models, techniques, and approaches to build creative understanding of user’s experiences for new product development. Implemented within industry and academia, these methods prove to be impactful as they have been shown to influence market capture and product similarity.

Bio: Dr. Diana Bairaktarova is an Assistant Professor in the College of Engineering, Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Dr. Bairaktarova completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University in Sofia, Bulgaria and an M.B.A. degree from the Hamline School of Business, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Dr. Bairaktarova has over a decade of experience working as a Design Engineer. Her research focuses on human learning and engineering, i.e. understanding how individual differences and aptitudes effect interaction with mechanical objects in engineering education instruction and how engineering students’ personality traits influence decision-making process in engineering design. 

For more information about Dr. Bairaktarova or the User Experience Design Presidential Dream Course Lecture Series, please click here.

For accommodations on the basis of disability, please contact Danielle Geier (405) 325-1715 or dgeier@ou.edu.