Kate Gomoll

President + Founder
Kate founded Gomoll Research + Design in 1993. Prior to starting the company, she worked in Apple’s Advanced Technology Group as a Human Interface Designer.

Industry Expert
Kate is an expert in human-centered design and usability. She is known for her practical, straightforward approach to user research and design. She has a recognized ability to motivate people and teach them to apply design thinking and human-centered design principles. Through over 30 years of practice, Kate has acquired both depth of knowledge and range of experience — invaluable tools for a leader and mentor.

Public Speaking + Training
Kate speaks regularly, teaching human-centered design, design thinking, field research methods, and usability testing. She has taught highly-rated workshops at many venues including UCLA Extension, ACM SIGCHI (Computer-Human Interaction), the Usability Professionals’ Association, UIE’s User Interface Conferences, the Royal College of Art in London, UW-Milwaukee, and Stanford University. Her guidelines for conducting user studies are published in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design and the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. She is co-author of “The Field Study Handbook: A Common Sense Approach for Discovering User Needs,” published by User Interface Engineering.

User Research
Kate is a leader in the field of contextual field research. She has managed, mentored, and conducted user research for a broad range of companies, including: Apple, Medtronic, GE Healthcare, NeuWave Medical, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson Controls, Charles Schwab, MSN TV, Northwestern Mutual, Mark Travel, and Sun.

Healthcare Industry Experience
Kate was instrumental in the efforts to design a common user interface (CUI) at GE Healthcare. She has consulted to Medtronic’s Deep Brain Stimulation and Cardiology divisions on human factors of the hardware for implants and the software for programming stimulation. Kate has led teams in designing user interfaces for microwave ablation, patient activity monitoring, ambulatory ECG analysis, electronic health records, radiation planning, and chronic disease management.

Online Help Design
Kate has a strong background in online help design. She was a member of the core design team that researched, prototyped, and produced Apple’s Help System, Apple Guide. She also wrote content for the production system and developed human interface guidelines.

Prior Work
Prior to founding Gomoll Research & Design, Kate worked at Apple, Taligent, Oracle, and IBM. She was also the User-Centered Design lead at GE Healthcare, where she trained and mentored product teams in user-centered design methods.

Education
Kate has a Master of Arts degree in Professional Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.