Do You See What I See? Formal Usability Testing and Statistical Graphics

• Activity Number: 109
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Graphics
• Author(s): Marie C. Vendettuoli*+ and Matthew Williams*+ and Susan Ruth VanderPlas*+
• Companies: USDA/APHIS/CVB and USDA/NASS and Iowa State University
• Keywords: R ; usability testing ; statistical graphics ; Mechanical Turk

Abstract

The focus of this session is to discuss the merits of various usability testing methodologies when developing statistical graphics and user interfaces in statistical software.

Mahbubul Majumder (Assistant Prof, Univ Nebraska) will talk about an online application for lineup evaluation to make decisions using lineups. People can use this application to upload their lineups for evaluation by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.

Susan VanderPlas (PhD candidate, Iowa State Univ) will talk about using Shiny to deploy interactive statistical graphics for evaluation via Amazon Mechanical Turk including the treatment of data from anonymized users.

Matt Williams (Mathematical Statistician, USDA NASS) will discuss some challenges for the "occupational" testing of statistical models within a federal statistical agency, examining ongoing case-studies which involve usability testing to create goals for achieving successful integration of cooperative models.

Discussant: Marie Vendettuoli (Statistical Programmer, USDA APHIS)