Julia Wright comes to Applied Experimental and Human Factors Psychology after a career in mechanical design engineering that included work in heavy industrial installations, appliance and automotive industries. During her time designing finish parts and assemblies for the appliance and automotive industries, she consistently strove to incorporate features into products that made them more user-friendly and intuitive for all consumer interactions from manufacture and assembly through to end-user.

Wanting to better understand the psychology of design, she returned to school to earn her BS in Psychology from Grand Valley State University, focusing on cognitive psychology with a minor in applied statistics. As an undergraduate student Julia worked in several research projects, including “the benefits of interruptions during complex task performance”. She is interested in memory and attention, visual attention, cognitive load distribution and human-technology interaction, particularly bridging the intuitive gap between humans and technology. One of Julia’s goals is to develop a cognitive psychology course specifically targeting the needs of engineering students to better prepare future design engineers. Julia is a Presidential Doctoral Fellowship recipient.

Applied Experimental and Human Factors PhD Student, University of Central Florida
B.S., Psychology, Grand Valley State University
Office: Psychology Building, Suite 209
Email: JuliaWright@knights.ucf.edu