BLOG

RESOURCES

THE COLLECTIVE VOICE

An Overview of “Better Together”

Reading Time: 6 minutes Better Together: The vital role of patients and end users in developing safe and effective medical devices Every few months, Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology releases a new journal publication on recent events, changes, and perspectives…

Human Factors Principles: Understanding Fitts’s Law

Reading Time: 3 minutes Fitts’s Law Have you ever wondered why the exit window buttons are often in the corner of the screen?  Why is the brake pedal larger than the accelerator? Why keyboard keys on the outer edges…

Pros and Cons of the System Usability Scale (SUS)

Reading Time: 9 minutes Development of the SUS In 1986, John Brooke developed a short questionnaire intended to measure the perceived usability of various computer systems. Simply a “quick and dirty” scale for usability testing, Brooke made the questionnaire…

Data Types: How do they work?

Reading Time: 3 minutes Data Types: Introduction Back in 1946, a Psychologist named Stanley Smith Stevens determined that there were four distinct data types: ratio, interval, ordinal, and categorical/nominal. These data types categorize different variables and give a direction…

1-on-1 Interview: Russ Branaghan, Human Factors Expert

Reading Time: 2 minutes With Dr. Russell Branaghan Each month, we interview a human factors expert to get their take on the Human Factors and User Experience industry. In this month’s installment, we sat down with the founder and…

Human Factors in History: Designing the STOP Sign

Reading Time: 9 minutes What’s yellow, bedazzled in glass beads, and made out of plywood? Believe it or not, we’re talking about the STOP sign. The red, reflective, octagonal traffic sign we see so often today did not always…

Design Principles: Forgiveness

Reading Time: 5 minutes ————————————————————————— Hi Dave, Please see the attached for October’s invoice.  Thanks! Anders ————————————————————————— Whoops, sorry.  Forgot to attach.  Here you go! Anders Attachment: Oct_2015 Invoice ————————————————————————– I’m guessing something like this has happened to you…

Research Design: Between-Subjects vs Within-Subjects

Reading Time: 3 minutes Research Design Understanding the basics of within-subjects and between-subjects designs is crucial for any decision-maker who is conducting research.  Participant design is a core concept, yet even experienced researchers sometimes have difficulty. Google search histories…

10 Pro Tips for Collecting High-Quality Interview Data

Reading Time: 5 minutes Collecting High-Quality Interview Data User Experience Researchers, ideally, run a ton of studies.  Whether it’s qualitative or quantitative, formative or summative, many things can harm the quality of the data you collect. The following is…