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Faculty Profile Last Modified Time: 09:09:08 AM Mon, 13 Apr 2020   Contact Information Philip T. Kortum Associated Profiles  Associate Professor, Chairman of the Undergraduate Committee, Psychology, Rice University   Sewall Hall, Room No.: 488    pkortum@rice.edu     713-348-4813    Web Link    Usability, Medical Human Factors, Voting Human Factors, Transportation Human Factors    Associated Profiles Research and Expertise Appointments  Research and Expertise Research Interests   I am interested in a number of applied human factors issues,as described in these brief summaries of some of my ongoing work: Voting System Usability: Voting is an essential activity in our democratic system in the United States. Before the Florida voting problem in 2000 (with the infamous butterfly ballot) very little research had been done to assess the usability of our nation's voting systems. We are now beginning to examine various aspects of voting systems, trying to understand how users interact with these systems, what kinds of errors they make and how we might design secure voting systems that are highly usable by the general population and those voters who may have physical disabilities. We are examining issues such as 1) the usability of smartphone-based voting systems, 2) the usability of end-to-end cryptographic voting systems, 3) audio voting interfaces to support voters with visual impairments and 4) the impact of polling station physical attributes on voter behaviors, just to name a few. Measuring the Usability of Products and Services: One of the biggest questions that arises in industry is trying to determine how usable a new product or service is before it is launched to the public. We have been collecting data using Brookes' System Usability Scale (SUS) for over a decade now, reporting on what usability scores look like across wide range of products. This data will allow usability practitioners to benchmark their results against a varied set of products and services, including telephones, television set top boxes, interactive voice services, wireless phones, PDAs and various software applications. We have also been working to develop metrics that will allow practitioners to more easily describe the results of these scores for easy dissemination across the product development teams and determine some of the factors, such as user experience and task sucess rates, that might impact those ratings. Human Factors of Wireless Mobile Computing: Wireless mobile computing is a relatively recent phenomenon that has gained increasing penetration in the United States. One aspect of this growth that remains unexplored is a greater understanding of how people actually use this new wireless mobile computing resource. In the recent past, users who needed internet connectivity were forced to utilize laptop computers that, while portable, couldn't really be conveniently carried everywhere you went. With the advent of the smartphone, users now have always-on access to the internat via traditional web browsing and a host of dedicated applications. We hope to gain a better understanding of how users have integrated this ubiquitious computing device into their lives and how they use it over extended periods of time. To do this we have recently completed a year long longitudinal study where we measured multiple aspects of smartphone use over a years time. Web Use and Navigation: We are currently investigating several lines of related research in this area. The first of these is concerned with how users deal with changes to web pages. Specifically, how do users cope when navigation structures change over the course of several visits. Using behavioral and eye tracking techniques, we are trying to understand how these kinds of changes impact user performance. We are also interested in how people use the web to find specific information that is relevant to them, and how they determine the 'goodness' of that information. Towards this end, we have been examining how teen users search for and evaluate medical information on the web.  Publications/Creative Works Click here to search for this faculty member's publications on PubMed.  Appointments Title Department / School Institution Associate Professor Psychology Rice University

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