Academic Credentials
  • M.S., Psychology, University of Idaho, 1995
  • B.A., Psychology, University of North Texas, 1991

Mr. DeVries is a Human Factors Managing Scientist at Exponent, and has previously held titles of User Experience Manager and Senior Researcher. In his over 30 years of combined experience, he has run and/or planned well over 250 studies and research engagements over a wide variety of research methods and across a wide variety of domains including consumer and business products, industrial equipment, medical equipment, warnings, measurement tools, higher education, telecom, military, and insurance. 

Mr. DeVries designs and conducts user experience research across all phases of the product development lifecycle. He designs and conducts ideation and requirements studies and activities, usability tests, cognitive walk-throughs, participatory design and benchmarking research, competitive comparison, survey research, heuristic evaluation, process evaluation, concept validation, icon effectiveness, task and function prioritization, persona development, time on task studies, and focus groups. Mr. DeVries creates studies to ensure that business, product, design, engineering, and other immediate and future needs are considered, and applies findings to optimize user experience, reduce product usage errors and customer concerns, and identify new user requirements and business opportunities.

As a manager, Mr. DeVries helps product teams reach their business objectives through user-centered research by leading research efforts to meet those objectives, and defines strategies for implementing programs such as standardizing metrics, benchmarking, and process improvements. Mr. DeVries accomplishes this by working with various client functional groups, such as Product, Engineering, Marketing, Analytics, Accessibility, Customer Service, C-level management and IT to identify research needs, and then define the research program and deliverables. He has extensive experience conducting design research and working directly with design teams in traditional, agile, and hybrid product development lifecycles.

Mr. DeVries also designs and manages user experience/human factors labs, including: