Bio
Laura Borns has 14 years of hands-on usability and interface design experience at some of the top software and Internet companies in the world. She is Principal Researcher and Owner of Cambridge Consultants LLC, a user research consulting company focused on providing qualitative and quantitative data to help inform product and business decisions.
Laura's work experience includes establishing a new Usability group at Friendster, a popular social networking website, and incorporating usability and community feedback into the development process. Prior to Friendster, Laura was the Lead Usability Engineer at eBay. During her 5 years at eBay, Laura designed and researched much of the original eBay website and collaborated with multidisciplinary teams to improve the experience for over 250 million users. Laura later took on a managerial role and managed a staff of 7 usability engineers while acting as point person in the company to provide user data to support business needs. Laura also worked at Oracle for three years, where she led usability efforts for Oracle Discoverer, a data analysis and reporting tool, which won several awards for ease of use. Laura began her usability career at Hewlett-Packard where she conducted user requirements analysis, profile and task analysis.
Laura has presented her usability research at several international conferences and contributed to a book and to Computer World magazine. Laura attended Emory University and has a BA in Psychology and a Masters degree (ABT) in Human Factors and Applied Experimental Design from California State University.
Resume
Laura's resume is available in Word and PDF formats.Partners
Cambridge Consultants has ongoing relationships with a number of talented professionals who provide services related to user research, including:- User interface designers
- Visual designers
- Web developers (to build interactive prototypes)
- Recruiting agencies (for study participants)
- Research rental facilities
Testimonials
"Laura is a dependable service provider to deliver high quality user experience research results and recommendations in a timely manner. She understands e-commerce related domains and consumers very well. She provided insightful results and actionable recommendations for my research projects. I would highly recommend her service for user experience research, particularly usability studies with consumers."
- Christina Tsai, Director, Online Customer Experience at TrendMicro
"I have worked with Laura on a number of projects at PayPal. She is always a pleasure to work with. Apart from her pleasant personality, her work has been superlative. In terms of user research, she is a very good moderator who is extremely patient with users. Her findings are to the point and very informative. She is very passionate about her work and that resonates with her work. I have been always extremely happy working with her and would highly recommend her."
- Sukhada Jog, User Experience Researcher at PayPal
"After my first project with Laura I made sure to get her contact info so I could bring her in on future projects. She makes an immediately positive impression. I'm always impressed with her work, and I don't impress easily. She's professional, sharp, insightful, and cool as a cucumber. She's been in the valley long enough to have a wide range of experience to draw on, and she always keeps current. On top of her talent and skill, she's warm and personable and a total joy to work with"
- Eli Beitzuri, Fluidik Interactive