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This panel includes five practitioners who publish across multiple venues. The purpose of this panel is to discuss with practitioners the challenges associated with publishing under restricted settings, such as when they are operating under non-disclosure agreements, to help them learn potential avenues to publish. The panelists represent practitioners with diverse backgrounds and approaches to publishing. The avenues for publication include traditional outlets like peer-reviewed journals and less traditional outlets like patents, magazines, and blog posts. Publishing our work, in whatever medium, can be a great way to enhance the power of the human factors community by sharing our methods and findings with colleagues and those seeking to learn more about human factors and user experience!

This prospective pilot study evaluated (1) the potential for collecting structured longitudinal data on patient-reported non-routine events (PNREs) (i.e., events that deviate from expected or optimal care) during pediatric and adult radiation cancer therapies and (2) the potential relationship between PNREs, Patient-Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs), and unplanned treatment events (UTEs). Along with PNREs, data were collected on patient’s background, distress, quality of life, hospital system care experience rating, and treatment intensity, during a 3-month period; UTEs were retrospectively captured through review of patients’ records. Initial results suggest a relationship exists between both PNREs and safety-relevant PNREs with patient distress, quality of life, and care experience ratings. UTEs occurred more often in pediatric patients and were primarily related to patients’ underlying disease. This systems-safety approach to identifying at-risk points in treatment pathways has the potential to provide actionable information for the mitigation of shortcomings in cancer therapy.

As part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recertification of Texas A&M University’s AGN-201M nuclear reactor, a human factors analysis was performed to evaluate the drawbacks of the current system and make design recommendations for a new console layout. The process involved three phases. Background development consisted of a literature review and expert interviews (both structured and unstructured). Process analysis was performed using hierarchical task analysis, critical incident analysis, and heuristic usability walkthroughs. Control panel redesign utilized an expanded version of link analysis through adding modern social networking analysis techniques. While social network analysis has previously been used for design, particular emphasis in this paper is placed on the novel application of faction and centrality analysis to identify group categories for console redesign.

Human Factors experiments often involve complex experimental designs that require complex statistical analysis. In practice, however, these complex models are often evaluated using oversimplified analyses that do not adequately account for statistical factors that can impact the interpretation of results. This article discusses a useful design for Human Factors experiments: the crossover-repeated measures design. It illustrates the importance of oft-ignored analytical steps in this design and how they can lead to different interpretations of the data and misleading conclusions. The article is intended for use as a refresher and includes explanations of statistical terminology and the components specific to crossover-repeated measures designs. Finally, it provides a case study of how proper and improper statistical methods can lead to drawing different conclusions from the data. SAS Code of the analyses performed for the case study can be found at < https://sites.google.com/a/tamu.edu/tippe002/home/sas >.

As suggested in recent research, some physiological measures such as breath rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, electroencephalography, and skin conductance response, can be used to indicate aspects of mental workload. Some of these physiological measures are insensitive to added mental workload at a point referred to as the cognitive redline. This redline is not well indicated in the literature, but is generally defined by patterns of performance decrements. The present study involved the use of the Multi-Attribute Task Battery-II (MATB-II) to systematically manipulate imposed multitask workload, and investigate the validity of online measures of heart rate variability (HRV) to indicate the cognitive redline, as inferred by performance and subjective workload measures.

Vibrotactile communication technologies are viable candidates for the replacement of more traditional radio communication technologies, particularly in domains where visual and auditory resources are either inconvenient or in high demand. Of particular interest is the potential for improved speeded communications, to allow those directing to directly steer their target rather than describing their intentions. This study evaluated the potential performance of a simple vibrotactile gesture system versus a radio communication control condition, continuing the research paradigm of a previous study by expanding potential response options. However, results indicate faster responses for the control condition, suggesting the need for further modification of the research paradigm to reduce participant awareness of evaluation points and improve communication feedback.

In-vehicle driver distractions are an increasing cause of automobile accidents. Recent advances in wearable consumer technologies impose new challenges for managing driver attention and regulating device use in the driving context. Google Glass is a wearable interface that presents information via a heads-up display and read aloud function, neither of which obstructs the user’s view of the surrounding environment. While Glass may benefit drivers by providing driving-related notifications, no documentation exists objectively measuring the extent to which using Glass impacts driving performance and safety. This preliminary study compared texting with Google Glass to other texting methods in a driving simulation to examine driver behavior and performance. While texting-and-driving is inadvisable, the task of texting may be constructed so that it does not provide information that alters the intent of the driving task, reducing confounding factors in analysis of the device’s impact on driving performance. The results of this study suggest that Glass performs much clos-er to baseline than the other technologies. Evidence from this preliminary investigation was used to form a complete study evaluating texting-and-driving with Google Glass. Results from these studies can be used to inform developers of wearable technologies and policymakers tasked with regulating the use of these tech-nologies while driving.

Haptic beats, an analogous presentation to auditory beats, can be generated when a vibrotactile actuator is driven by a signal that contains two different activation frequencies. In contrast to a combined signal stimulating one location, this study explored to what extent haptic beats can be perceived as an emergent property when separate body locations are stimulated at two different frequencies. Consistent with previous findings, haptic beats were reliably perceived with paired presentations on the same fingertip; previously-unexplored locations on the palm, wrist, and elbow also supported the perception of beats. However, haptic beats were not perceived when stimuli were presented to distant locations, such as on different hands, suggesting that haptic beats most likely involve a localized mechanical integration rather than neural integration. These results have implications for the design of complex haptic displays for various domains, such as driving, navigation, medicine, and immersive virtual reality.