Provides services and technical assistance for students so they benefit from research-based curricula taught in safe environments.

Produces and disseminates information to provide motivation and tools to enable individuals to make informed decisions about health issues.

Develops and implements education testing programs that benefit students, parents and public officals.

Works with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government's primary source for collecting and analyzing data about public education.

Helps to provide all children with access to a quality education, and empowers people, organizations, and communities to bring about social change.

Is committed to helping clients improve the effectiveness of their workforce through a wide range of management, organizational, and business improvement efforts.

Produces, maintains and disseminates systematic reviews of the effects of social and behavioral interventions.

Our human factors research and design engineers:

• Analyze user needs
• Design and build prototypes of user interfaces
• Test the usability of products
• Perform expert reviews of hardware, software, services, and documentation
• Conduct workshops

Here is a sampling of the difficult and important questions that we help our clients answer:

• How can you design a product so that it appeals to customers?
• How do you meet the challenge of creating software to handle huge increases in online activity and serve the user’s need for a tool that is easy to manage?
• How do you go about designing a product that people find usable, regardless of individual differences in learning style and depth of experience with technology?
• As products become more complex, what steps should be taken to ensure that they will remain effective and intuitive?
• How can a company change its product development process and underlying culture to be more user- or customer-centered?
• How do you design your product to be accessible to persons with disabilities, or to be accessible through more than one communication medium?

Technology — in the form of computers, microprocessors, medical devices, and communications equipment — is now an integral part of work and play for an increasing number of people around the world. Matching the needs of people with the demands of this technology will remain a significant challenge, especially with the accelerating pace of technological change.

One of our most important opportunities will be helping organizations develop information systems and products for the international marketplace. We continue to expand our capabilities to design and test new products made for people in the European Union and Asia, as well as in the United States.

Our challenge is to understand cultural similarities and differences as we develop new technologies to connect individuals in the global marketplace.