Susan M. Dray is an American human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX) professional who is a member of the

CHI academy The CHI Academy is a group of researchers honored by SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group in Computer–Human Interaction of the Association for Computing Machinery. Each year, 5–8 new members are elected for having made a significant, cumulative co ...

and the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA). Dray is known for her work in the field of

UX design User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD) is the process of defining the experience a user would go through when interacting with a digital product or website. Design decisions in UX design are often driven by research, data analysis, an ...

and is also a founding member of

SIGCHI The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international HC ...

, the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

's special interest group for human-computer interaction.

Education

Dray earned a Bachelor of Arts in

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

from

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

in 1972. She then went on to pursue her master's degree and PhD in

from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

Career

Dray's career in industrial research began in 1979 at

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

, where she became manager of human-technology impacts and also a senior research scientist. Later, she worked at

American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...

, and became the first to develop a usability lab of corporate systems in the industry. In 2014, Dray went to Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá (UTP) in

Panama City Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...

as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

to develop and enrich an HCI program for the university. Dray currently serves as the president emerita of Dray & Associates, which is a small user experience consulting firm where she leads a team that plans and carries out user experience and design research on their clients' main products. She started the company in 1993.

Awards and recognition

Dray has won numerous awards over the course of her career, most notably her Lifetime achievement in practice award in 2015, the highest award given by

. In 2017, she became an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

"for co-founding ACM SIGCHI and disseminating exemplary user experience design and evaluation practices worldwide." She is also recognized by the UXPA who awarded her the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. In addition, she is a Fellow of the

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) is an interdisciplinary nonprofit professional organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, covering the fields of human factors and ergonomics. Founded in 1957, HFES claims 4500 m ...

. Other awards: * Lifetime Service Award - SIGCHI (2006) * Distinguished Member - ACM SIGCHI (2008)

References

External links

CHI 2015 Lifetime Practice Award: Susan Dray - Building Bridges, Not Walls
video lecture
Google Scholar for Susan DrayCurriculum Vitae (July 2020)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dray, Susan M. Living people Mills College alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Human–computer interaction researchers Design researchers Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Year of birth missing (living people)