Kara Pernice is the Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the company's East Coast operations.

She has led many of NN/g's major intercontinental research studies, generated the resulting design guidelines, and coauthored several reports, including designing corporate intranets, designing for accessibility, designing for people over the age of 65, and designing websites to maximize press relations.

She is a leading authority on intranet usability and eyetracking usability (The Wall Street Journal called her “an intranet guru”).

She judged the submissions for and coauthored NN/g's government intranets report and its Intranet Design Annuals in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.

She has also done extensive research in evaluating emotion and design. has given presentations on a wide range of topics, and has worked with clients in various industries, including publishing, entertainment, technology, finance, pharmaceuticals, and government.

She has more than 15 years of experience in evaluating usability, and has established successful usability programs at Lotus Development, Iris Associates (an IBM subsidiary), and Interleaf. She chaired the Usability Professionals' Association 2000 and 2001 conferences, and served as 2002 conference advisor. She holds an M.B.A. from Northeastern University and a B.A. from Simmons College.