Alacrity

  • Katie Osterhage Receives UW Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Collaborative Impact Staff Award

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    Alacrity

    Congratulations to Katie Osterhage, UW ALACRITY Center Manager, who has received the UW Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Collaborative Impact Staff Award. The award recognizes her valuable efforts toward supporting the department’s mission and upholding its core values of collaboration, continuous learning and mentorship, and integrity and accountability. As Center Manager, Katie holds together…

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  • UWAC investigator Jenna van Draanen & READU team receive 2026 Academy Health Mosaic Award

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    Alacrity

    UWAC investigator Jenna van Draanen and her team at the University of Washington have received the 2026 Mosaic Award from Academy Health, recognizing organizations that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion in health services and policy research. Van Draanen leads Research with Expert Advisors on Drug Use (READU), an interdisciplinary team that spans UW’s schools of…

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  • Sharing UWAC Research at Academy Health 2026

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    Alacrity

    UW ALACRITY Researchers recently shared our work at AcademyHealth‘s Annual Research meeting in Seattle. Break It to Fix It: Redesigning Youth Interventions and Implementation In School Vaughan Collins, Isabell Griffith Fillipo, Ryan Allred, Kat Bruzios, and Tricia Aung Panel on methodological approaches used during the Discover phase of the Discover, Design/Build, Test (DDBT) framework that…

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  • Investigator Spotlight: Gary Hsieh on Closing the Research–Practice Gap

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    Alacrity

    UWAC investigator and HCDE Professor Gary Hsieh and his Prosocial Computing Group are developing tools that help practitioners discover and apply research insights in their everyday work. Rather than leaving findings locked in academic papers, the group translates research into formats practitioners already use — design cards, Figma plug-ins, policy briefs, and short-form videos. Recent projects include Paper2Card,…

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  • Usability Issue Reporting Format

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    Alacrity

    Usability Issue Reporting Format Measures & Guidance > Usability > Usability Issue Reporting Format Across the UW ALACRITY Center, we seek to identify recurring usability issues with evidence-based practices and the services and systems designed to support or implement them, and to identify effective patterns for addressing those issues. The purpose of this guide is…

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  • Emily Friedman, MID, CPE

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    Alacrity

    Former UX Research & Design Lead Emily Friedman is a designer, researcher, and human factors/usability specialist. Focused on health care delivery, she has led product and service design efforts with an emphasis on user experience and ethnographic research. Emily earned her master’s in Industrial Design from the Pratt Institute, holds a BS in Human Factors & Ergonomics from…

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  • Usability Interviews & Task-Based Usability Testing

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    Alacrity

    Measures & Guidance > Usability > Usability Interviews & Task-based Usability Testing Usability issues are often best understood through a combination of interviews and task-based usability testing. Critical Incident Technique Interviews  Sometimes, teams may be most interested in learning about usability issues that emerge only in complex, real-world situations, and that are hard to reproduce…

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  • Brenna Renn, Ph.D.

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    Alacrity

    Former Center ManagerAssistant Professor, Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Brenna Renn was the inaugural UW ALACRITY Center Manager. Dr. Renn is a clinical geropsychologist who specializes in behavioral interventions for older adults, particularly in the context of depression, chronic disease, health promotion, and in integrated primary care behavioral health. Her research aims to improve…

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  • Michael Pullmann, Ph.D.

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    Alacrity

    Former Co-Director, Methods Core Dr. Pullmann’s was previously co-director of the UW ALACRITY Center Methods Core. His research focuses on community-based and participatory approaches in cross-system collaborative efforts. He has a particular interest in illuminating policy decisions through longitudinal approaches to data analyses of large-scale administrative databases, and on more small-scale implementation and dissemination efforts. Dr.…

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  • Patricia A. Areán, Ph.D.

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    Alacrity

    Founding Director Dr. Areán is a leading behavioral scientist, with an expertise cross-cultural mental health, geriatric psychology, assessment and treatment of depression and anxiety, and in the use of technology to conduct surveys, user experience research and clinical trials to scale. Dr. Areán’s work focuses on creating and evaluating efficient, targeted and portable behavioral interventions…

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