About Midwest Research, LLC

Midwest Research, LLC, is a small, woman-owned business located in Northern Ohio. We are within easy driving distance to Cleveland and Columbus, OH as well as Pittsburgh, PA and Detroit, MI. Midwest Research has a network of designers, developers, usability specialists and other contractors who augment our staff on projects as needed.

Our experience includes work with government, non-profit, and private sector clients including Fortune 500 clients in industries such as: automotive; education (classroom and e-learning); financial; fine art; health care/medical; human resources; insurance; manufacturing; real-estate; and retail. Projects have included the development of transactional web sites, complex applications, intranet portals, and consumer products.

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Project Timing

It is never too early to involve Midwest Research in your project. Before you have requirements gathered Midwest Research can determine your user's needs and help your team integrate those findings into your requirements documents. We can also do our work later in the development process, though our effectiveness diminishes the further along in development a project is. We are most effective when we come in at the planning stages to help make sure your timeline allows for both research before, and iteration during, development.

Project Size

We have worked with very small non-profits and very large Fortune 500 corporations. Some projects only last a week or two and others may last many months. Contact us to find out what we can do to help your project be successful, on-time and on-budget regardless of its size. If the project is not a match we’ll try to help you find someone who can successfully support you.

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Midwest Research's Mission

• To provide our clients with insights from real people in real situations, and translate these into innovative solutions.
• To define and create smart experiences which are intuitive, exciting, and delightful.
• To establish excellent working relationships with our clients where communication, teamwork, and integrity are fundamental.
• To conduct thorough research: carefully and precisely analyze all data prior to writing reports and making recommendations.
• To treat all research participants with respect and empathy, believing that they hold the answers to our research questions and business success.

Carol J. Smith, Principal

Carol Smith has worked on projects for clients that are both large and small, government and corporate, in a variety of industries. Ms. Smith is confident facilitating a wide range of usability methods with both children and adults, in their homes, schools, factories, and offices. She earned her Masters of Computer Science in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University in Chicago, IL.

Ms. Smith has presented internationally on accessibility and usability subjects at the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) International Conference and is an active member of the UPA. She is on the UPA Board of Directors and is a member of the international committee defining the Usability Body of Knowledge. Previously Ms. Smith was a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative's, Education and Outreach Working Group.

Associates

Lisa Battle, Interaction Design Consultant

Lisa Battle has 15 years of experience in eliciting user needs, designing to support user performance, and leading successful user-centered design projects. She has designed usable software, web-based applications, and web sites for clients in a variety of industries and in the federal government. She is also an expert on accessibility, which makes products and services easier to use for people with disabilities.

Ms. Battle has presented on accessibility, usability, requirements engineering, semantic web, and strategic design at numerous conferences, including UPA, HCI International, Society for Technical Communication (STC), ASSETS, Extreme Markup, and the Government Solutions Conference. She is the author of two book chapters as well as articles in Performance Improvement and the IBM Systems Journal. In her six years of consulting with the U.S. Social Security Administration, she was instrumental in institutionalizing usability and creating a center of excellence for user-centered design within that agency. Ms. Battle holds a master's degree in Cognitive Psychology/Human Factors from George Mason University. Ms. Battle is the Principal at Design for Context.

Rachel Sengers, Interaction Design Consultant

Rachel Sengers is an interaction designer and information architect with over 10 years of experience designing Web-based applications and sites for a variety of clients in the communications and financial industries, the federal government, and other sectors. She helps clients to clarify project goals, plans how users will move through a site and accomplish their tasks, specifies the details of the user interface, and then monitors development to ensure project requirements are implemented.

Ms. Sengers has experience with all stages of the user-centered design process, including gathering requirements, prototyping, visual design, user testing, section 508 compliance, and production. Her background includes many years as a Design Director, guiding a team of designers and developers at a web design company. She is completing a graduate certificate program in Information Design at University of Baltimore, and is an active volunteer with the Washington, DC Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association.