Human Factors & User Experience

User Experience Research Laboratories (URL) & Consulting Services

J.S. Held Acquires Shechter & Everett to Expand Forensic Accounting Capabilities for Family Law Disputes in Florida

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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 to support product development and testing, regulatory compliance, and legal defensibility.

Our scientific user experience experts combine academic training with deep industry experience across a wide range of products and sectors. We deliver university-grade human factors testing and user experience research that provide key insight—informing product development decisions, safety considerations, and regulatory submissions—at a more modest cost than academic institutions and with more efficient turnaround.

Unlike other UX researchers, we leverage decades of product-related litigation support and expert witness services, which continually enhances 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 a network of state-of the-art scientific user experience (UX) research laboratories designed to support complex usability testing and human factors evaluations. Located in Phoenix, AZ; New York, NY; and Redmond, WA, these labs serve clients across regulated industries, including technology, healthcare and medical devices, manufacturing, and more.

In working with J.S. Held’s user experience experts, clients also have access to a 1.6-mile, closed-course test track, with lane markings, stop signs, and traffic lights, as well as a nine-acre skid pad. The track has user experience applications including testing of wearable technology, in-vehicle entertainment and infotainment systems, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and potential issues arising from increased automation and electrification.

These sites, as well as future locations, have access to in-house recruitment, screening, and J.S. Held’s institutional review board (IRB), promoting scientific validity and legal defensibility in each study.

 

Phoenix, AZ Research Lab
2075 Pinnacle Peak Rd, Suite 130, Phoenix, AZ 85027

Featuring six fully equipped usability testing lab suites, a large 40’ x 30’ flexible testing space for conducting motion capture, and advanced tools for physiological data collection including eye tracking, ectodermal activity (EDA), galvanic skin response (GSR), EMG, and EKG. This lab also supports simulated medical use testing and draws from a demographically diverse participant pool in the area.

 

New York, NY Research Lab
28 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036

Offering access to a cosmopolitan population ideal for enterprise UX research, resident financial services organizations, and international technology products. Its location supports rapid recruitment of participants and notably outspoken, critical feedback across a broad range of user groups.

 

Redmond, WA Research Lab
18372 Redmond Way, Redmond, WA 98052

Providing cutting-edge biomechanics capabilities and strategic proximity to major technology companies, allowing for close client collaboration during in-person research sessions.

Scalable and Efficient User Experience Research

An organization’s user experience research needs are often transient and tied to specific development phases, regulatory milestones, or litigation. Our user experience laboratory services provide clients with turnkey testing support, with benefits including:

Scale Research Rapidly with Demand
Our expert UX 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.

Improve Team Efficiency
Our UX and human factors professionals allow 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.

Cross-Industry Expertise and Technology-Enabled Insights

J.S. Held scientific UX research is conducted by our experts in human factors, ergonomics, biomechanics, kinesiology, and usability engineering, to help clients:

Access to Cross-Product & Cross-Industry Experience
We work with many clients across different industries, allowing them to leverage cross-product and cross-industry experience to ensure products are best-in-class and embody state-of-the-science. Our UX experts are experienced in product liability litigation, as well as regulatory submissions to bodies including the Food & Drug Administration & Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), among others.

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 eye tracking equipment, an EMG recording device, or motion capture cameras, for example.

Gain High-Quality, Reliable Insights
Our clients gain objective third-party findings 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. Our reports provide critical insight for legal counsel, product development and engineering teams, and regulatory submissions.

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

J.S. Held’s UX research and human factors services help clients create safer, more effective products.

Our team delivers actionable insights that support design decision-making, enhanced product usability, and regulatory compliance, while ensuring product designs are legally defensible.

Our user experience research solutions deliver:

  • Safer, more user-centered products
  • Competitive product differentiation in the market to enhance customer loyalty and increase market share
  • Data-driven, legally defensible findings to inform design

By engaging our experts early in the development cycle, companies reduce the risk of costly late-stage design changes, product recalls, and user-related safety issues. Each study is grounded in scientifically rigorous methodology, ensuring findings are reliable, objective, and ready for use in regulatory or legal review.

UX Expert Witness and Litigation Support

J.S. Held’s user experience and human factors experts testify in disputes involving product usability, human error, product labeling, instructions, literature, and warnings.

Our experts leverage the capabilities of our User Experience Research Laboratories in order to empirically test contentious questions in litigation, utilizing methodologies including eye tracking of warnings and marketing materials, among other scientific approaches.

We advise clients and their counsel by providing expert reports and deposition and courtroom testimony, leveraging deep UX expertise in product liability, personal injury, and product recalls. Our findings are built to hold up under legal scrutiny and are informed by extensive experience in local, state, federal, and regulatory forums.

UX Research Engagements: J.S. Held Models and Availability

Clients engage our UX and human factors experts for project-specific guidance and strategic partnership on a long-term basis. We provide proactive product development research, regulatory submission guidance, and litigation consulting with flexible availability across remote, hybrid, and in-lab formats.

Each engagement is scoped to match the complexity, legal sensitivity, timing, and compliance requirements of the project, ensuring focused, defensible contributions from our team at every stage.

Our Subject Matter Experts

Our multidisciplinary team brings together industry-recognized experts across engineering, scientific, healthcare, psychology, environmental, and regulatory fields. Our professionals conduct user research and human factors analysis that informs user-centric product design and alignment with legal, safety, and compliance standards. Our experts include:

Human Factors and Psychology Experts:

  • Biomechanical Experts
  • Cognitive Psychologists
  • Computer Vision Scientists
  • Developmental Psychologists
  • Human Factors Psychologists
  • Perception Scientists
  • Transportation Psychologists

Engineering and Scientific Experts:

  • Accident Reconstruction Consultants
  • Data Scientists
  • Equipment Consultants
  • Metallurgists and Materials Scientists
  • Professional Engineers
  • Statisticians

Environmental, Health, and Safety Experts:

  • Certified Hazardous Materials Managers
  • Certified Industrial Hygienists
  • Certified Safety Professionals
  • Environmental Scientists
  • Epidemiologists
  • Food Forensics and Safety Experts
  • Infectious Disease Experts
  • Product Liability Experts
  • Regulatory Compliance Experts
  • Toxicologists
  • Workplace Safety Experts
Industries We Serve

J.S. Held supports clients across a broad range of highly regulated and high-risk industries where usability, product safety, and regulatory compliance are critical. Our UX research is tailored to the technical, legal, regulatory, and operational demands of each sector, including:

  • Technology, Media, and Telecommunications
    • Cyber
    • Extended Reality Products (VR, AR, MR)
    • Mobile Devices
    • Social Media
    • Wearable Technology
    • Web Products and Services
  • Healthcare and Medical Devices
  • Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological
  • Consumer Products and Services
  • Retail, Restaurant, and Hospitality
  • Industrial and Manufacturing
  • Food and Beverage
  • Financial Services
  • Government

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.

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For additional information about our services and to help put you in touch with the appropriate expert across our global team, contact:

 
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