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Hi, I'm Kelli Sum. Human Factors Engineer with 8 years of experience in human factors and user research, including 5 years developing robotic surgical systems and medical devices. I specialize in user-centered product design, translating insights from healthcare professionals into requirements that shape safe, effective, and intuitive automation. My work focuses on gathering and defining user needs through interviews, surveys, live observations, and workflow mapping to ensure products fit seamlessly into real clinical environments. I’m passionate about designing systems that support users — not force users to adapt to the system — especially when it comes to complex automation.
Proud alumna of San Jose State University (B.S. Industrial Engineering, M.S. Human Factors & Ergonomics).
As medical devices are becoming more technologically advanced, incorrect use could have disastrous impacts on a patient's health and safety. I conduct research for a $401,000 grant sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on training decay of medical device and combination products.
Patients can recover from surgeries quicker and get back to their lives through minimally invasive, robotic surgery. For a User Research internship at Intuitive, I combined my quantitative skill sets with qualitative research methods to develop a set of meaningful findings that shaped the company's view of a valued user group.
The development team lacked a grounded understanding of the "real-world" physical constraints within hospital procedure rooms, including clinician walking paths and equipment density. Without this data, the team faced a high risk of making foundational architectural decisions that would be incompatible with clinical environments. By conducting an extensive environmental analysis across community and academic hospitals, I identified the critical spatial and workflow boundaries required to guide years of hardware and software engineering
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