Scientific User Experience Research Experts

We provide bespoke, turnkey user experience (UX) research support based on scientific methods and decades of failure analysis experience, enabling clients to make fact-based, defensible product decisions.

Our experts deliver an unparalleled leverage of your resources in UX, human factors, or ergonomics research needs.

Our experts are academically trained in foundational scientific research and possess deep industry experience with many varied products across different sectors. We efficiently deliver university-grade research and actionable insights that translate directly into product-related decisions. Unlike other UX researchers, we leverage insights from our experience in litigation support and as expert witnesses in product-related litigation to continually enhance our research methods to hold up to scientific scrutiny and defensibility in a legal context.

Our UX Research Services

A/B Testing
Accessibility Assessment
Card Sorting
Cognitive Workload Assessment
Competitive Analysis & Benchmarking
Contextual Inquiry
CPSC Letter of Advice Support
Diary Studies
Ergonomics
Ethnography
Expert Witness Services & Litigation Support
Eye Tracking & Pupillometry
Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA)
FDA CAPA Support
FDA Deficiency Letter Support

Formative & Validation / Summative Medical Device Testing
Hardware, Software & User Interface (UI) Consulting
Health & Safety Assessments
Heuristic Evaluation & Expert Review
Instructions & Warnings Comprehension Testing & Design
Interaction Design Concepts
Literature Review
Market & Pricing Research
Market Gap Analysis
MaxDiff Analyses
Meta Analyses
Motion Capture/IMUs
Needs & Motivation Analysis
Participatory Design
PMA/510(k)/De Novo Regulatory Submission Support

Product Recall Support
Physiological Data Recording (EEG, EMG, EKG)
Remote Testing
Review of Large-Scale Databases
Risk Analysis & Communication
Survey & Questionnaire Design & Analysis
Task Analyses
Time & Motion Studies
Tree Tests
Unmoderated User Testing
Usability Testing
User Journeys
User Requirements Engineering
Workflow Analysis

J.S. Held’s Scientific User Research Labs (URL)

J.S. Held operates an ever-expanding network of state-of-the-art user research labs across the country, with current locations in Phoenix, AZ and New York, NY.

The Phoenix location boasts six usability lab suites with advanced audio and video recording and streaming capabilities, various physiological data recording capabilities, such as electrodermal activity (EDA) or GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), EMG, EKG, and eye tracking, as well as large 40’ x 30’ flexible lab space for conducting motion capture.

The Phoenix labs were built specifically to escape local tech bubbles and industrial espionage, recruit a diverse population of participants, and include study participants more representative of the U.S. population than those in other locales. The Phoenix labs also house the equipment and props necessary to conduct simulated medical use testing.

In turn, the Manhattan lab was developed to tap into the participant base in this sprawling, diverse, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and outspokenly critical metropolis, with its resident financial industries, foreign consumer tech headquarters, and proximity to Europe.

Both sites, as well as future locations, have access to in-house recruitment, screening, and J.S. Held’s in-house institutional review board (IRB).

J.S. Held’s User Experience Research Expertise

Scale Research Rapidly with Demand
An organization’s user experience research needs are often transient. Our researchers can be added ad hoc without the need for time-intensive and cost-intensive interviewing, hiring, onboarding, or training of dedicated internal staff, allowing clients to scale rapidly in response to surges in research demand.

Access to Cross-Product & Cross-Industry Experience
We work with many clients across different industries, allowing clients to leverage cross-product and cross-industry experience to ensure products are best-in-class and embody state-of-the-science.

Reduce Capital Investment
By engaging our experts for proactive user experience research, clients gain access to capital equipment owned by the researchers without having to make a capital investment themselves, as well as to the highly specialized experts from disparate fields who are well-versed in the use of the equipment, be it an eye tracker, an EMG recording device, or motion capture cameras, for example.

Improve Team Efficiency
Our research team allows clients to offload bandwidth-sapping tasks from internal core teams, so they can continue to focus on their assigned responsibilities, thereby gaining better leverage from the internal teams and expediting product development timelines, as no one is pulled from their assigned tasks.

Gain High-Quality, Reliable Insights
Our clients gain impartial results from a neutral third party, receive an outsider perspective unaffected by institutionalized mental models, and have the option of collecting data under attorney-client privilege.

Benefits of J.S. Held’s User Experience Research

Along with meeting regulatory requirements, our user experience research can help companies to:

Develop safer products
Differentiate their products in the market
Increase market share
Increase customer loyalty
Make informed, data-driven decisions
Earn legal defensibility in case of future legal action

Our user experience research can be conducted quickly and at a comparatively modest cost to university research, thus mitigating the risk of testing the viability of a new product by launching it into the market unvetted.

It is a widely documented finding that the cost of design changes goes up by orders of magnitude as the product gets closer to release, and the feature space becomes increasingly constrained. By engaging our experts early in the product development lifecycle, our proactive research helps to avoid these additional costs, as well as the negative reputational damage, product recalls, or litigation that may arise from releasing an untested product or service into the market.

Our Subject Matter Experts

Accident Reconstruction Consultants
Biomechanical Experts
Certified Hazardous Materials Managers
Certified Industrial Hygienists
Certified Safety Professionals
Cognitive Psychologists
Computer Vision Scientists
Data Scientists
Developmental Psychologists
Environmental Scientists
Epidemiologists
Equipment Consultants
Food Forensics & Safety Experts
Human Factors Psychologists
Infectious Disease Experts
Kinesiologists
Metallurgists & Materials Scientists
Perception Scientists
Product Liability Experts
Professional Engineers
Regulatory Compliance Experts
Statisticians
Toxicologists
Transportation Psychologists
Workplace Safety Experts

Industries We Serve

Aerospace & Aviation
Appliances
Automotive
Consumer Products & Services
Cyber
Education
Extended Reality Products (VR, AR, MR)
Financial Services
Fitness Equipment
Food & Beverage
Government
Healthcare and Medical Devices
Industrial & Manufacturing
Mobile Devices
Pharma Products
Retail, Restaurant & Hospitality
Social Media
Technology, Media & Telecommunications
Wearable Technology
Web Products & Services

J.S. Held’s
User Research Labs (URL)

Our experts have advanced degrees in various scientific fields from prestigious institutions, authored peer-reviewed publications in academic journals, and have extensively tested products and evaluated the user experience.

We deliver work products suitable for scientific publication, distilling and effectively communicating key insights to industry stakeholders on timelines compatible with the fast pace of the product development lifecycle that efficiently and impactfully uses financial resources. Unlike some university researchers, we are not invested in owning the intellectual property generated by our research or incentivized to publish our research, which in both scenarios have the potential to generate tension between business interests and motivators that propel researchers.

Expertise Across the Product & Service Development Lifecycle

We provide human factors and user experience support along the entire product lifecycle, from ideation to product retirement. Unlike other user experience agencies, we spend a significant amount of time on the post-product launch phase of the lifecycle, which allows us to leverage insights gained from product failures and product litigation into the earlier phases of the lifecycle.

RELATED SERVICE AREAS Click the icon to view the directory

Healthcare Human Factors

Human Factors Consulting

Human Factors Litigation Support

Find Your Expert

User Experience Research Laboratories (URL)

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Keep up with the latest research and announcements from our team.

J.S. Held

Headquarters

50 Jericho Quadrangle
Suite 117
Jericho, N.Y. 11753
+1 516 621 2900
[email protected]

Media Relations

Contact: [email protected]

YouTube

Twitter

Subsidiary Firms

Contract Administration Associates, a J.S. Held Company

DBSConsult, a J.S. Held Company

JS Held Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. | Registration No. 202001033278 (1389599-P)

J.S. Held Engineering Services PLLC

J.S. Held Singapore Pte. Ltd. | Registration No. 202032700W

J.S. Held UK Limited

J.S. Held India Private Limited

Ocean Tomo, a part of J.S. Held

California Architecture & Engineering services are provided by J.S. Held Engineering and Architecture, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of J.S. Held LLC

Areas of Expertise

Technical & Scientific

Strategic Advisory

Financial Investigations, Valuation & Risk

Digital & Data

Insights

White Papers & Research Reports

Perspectives

Educational Seminars & Events

Markets Served

Consumer Products & Services

Industrial & Manufacturing

Insurance

Private Equity

Real Estate

Retail, Restaurant & Hospitality

Technology, Media & Telecommunications

Transportation Infrastructure

About J.S. Held

Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II

J.S. Held, its affiliates and subsidiaries are not certified public accounting firm(s) and do not provide audit, attest, or any other public accounting services. J.S. Held is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Securities offered through PM Securities, LLC, d/b/a Phoenix IB, a part of J.S. Held, member FINRA/ SIPC or Ocean Tomo Investment Group, LLC, a part of J.S. Held, member FINRA/ SIPC. All rights reserved.

Member FINRA | SIPC