Bill Albert, PhD, James R. (Jim) Lewis, Ph.D

We are delighted to publish an editorial by Dr. Philip Kortum titled “Has Human Factors and Usability Lost Its Mojo?” In his editorial Kortum argues that our work user experience and human factors has not lived up to its potential. He provides many examples spanning web design, software, automotive, and medical fields where we as […] [Read More]

Philip Kortum, PhD

Introduction The human factors and usability community has contributed greatly to the safety, usability, and general acceptance of systems over the last 70 years. The tireless work of countless researchers and practitioners has had a significant positive impact on society. Although there are untold numbers of success stories where human factors and usability professionals have […] [Read More]

Bernard Rummel

Abstract Weibull analysis is an established method in technical reliability analysis for describing and analyzing the lifetime of technical parts. This paper describes the approach and demonstrates its application on task completion times from small-sample usability tests. Fitting a Weibull distribution model to observed data lets the analyst estimate task completion rates for any given […] [Read More]

James R. (Jim) Lewis, Ph.D, Oğuzhan Erdinç

Abstract There is a large body of work on the topic of the optimal number of response options to use in multipoint items. The takeaways from the literature are not completely consistent, most likely due to variation in measurement contexts (e.g., clinical, market research, psychology) and optimization criteria (e.g., reliability, validity, sensitivity, ease-of-use). There is […] [Read More]