AHFE Conference
Conference Tutorials

AHFE Tutorials Program

ahfe

AHFE Tutorials and workshops are popular and attended by many researchers each year.  Half-Day tutorials at introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels, covering the entire spectrum of the conference.

Hybrid Conference Mode: In order to give our participants more flexibility, we will offer the option to attend in-person onsite or virtual/online via the dedicated conference virtual platform. Participants are asked to select their preferred attendance option when submitting their registration.


Note: Due to time zone differences and to accommodate both tutorial participants and tutorial speakers located in Europe, Asia and America, AHFE 2025 tutorial program will be offered in Hybrid format (Live onsite, Online and Recorded format) on July 26-27, 2025.


  Tutorial Group A - 10:00 - 12:00 (EST) July 26, 2025



Understanding a person’s psychophysiological condition is crucial for different fields of applications, including health monitoring and cognitive stress measurement. Continuous measurement helps us understand the physical and cognitive condition of a person. Heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and heart rate variability helps to assess the affective nature of a person. This can help study stress level, attention, fatigue, discomfort, delirium, and productivity of a human being including a factory worker, or a driver. But Most of the measurement methods available in practice require instrumentation, which are often intrusive in nature, impossible to use for continuous monitoring and need experts to operate. Remote measurement eases the inconvenience associated with contact-based devices, reduces person hour, and enables safer alternative. The recent pandemic has further demonstrated the importance of contactless measurement methods. One major part of this tutorial will cover remote measurement of vital signs.
The tutorial will also discuss recent advances in ubiquitous health monitoring. Ubiquitous health monitoring refers to the continuous and seamless monitoring of an individual's health and physiological parameters using various interconnected and pervasive technologies. The goal of ubiquitous health monitoring is to provide real-time and non-intrusive data collection, analysis, and feedback to support healthcare and promote wellness. This concept leverages the widespread adoption of wearable devices, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and other smart technologies to monitor a person's health status constantly, regardless of their location or activity.

In this tutorial we would present how the community can take advantage of recent developments in wearables and remote measurement for continuous monitoring of vital signs. With increasing use of cyber physical systems, internet of things across industries including wearables, remote measurement is gaining more attention than ever. Due to the development of artificial intelligence and emergence of big data analysis in last decade, vital sign measurements are now very accurate and can extract different modalities of vital sign. This tutorial aims to provide a comprehensive detail of all such development, underlying technology, and their scope in human factor research.

This tutorial will discuss several important components of remote measurements and summarizes work from last two decades in a half-day session:

1. Scopes: First, we’ll discuss the scopes and promises of remote measurement of vital signs (heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability), and ubiquitous health monitoring across industry and discuss the benefits. This part will further discuss the scope of ubiquitous health monitoring, related challenges, sensors, and technologies. (Dr. Lynn Abbott) - 30 min
2. Application: Next, we’ll discuss the roles of vital sign in psychophysiological measures including arrythmia, cognitive stress, attention, fatigue, discomfort, and drowsiness. (Dr. Abhijit Sarkar) – 30 min
3. Existing Methods: Next, we’ll discuss promises and limitations of existing methods for remote measurement of vital signs. This includes methods that uses conventional cameras, RF cameras, radar, Wifi. This will highlight some of the major accomplishment for each of the methods. (Dr. Lynn Abbott) – 30 min
4. Break – 15 min
5. Ubiquitous health monitoring (UHM): This session will discuss what UHM is, components of UHM, current state of research in wearable technologies, cloud-based computing of health data, and how advanced data analytics techniques are used for UHM (Dr. Sarkar, Dr. Abbott).
6. Camera based method: (Dr. Abhijit Sarkar) – 60 minutes
a. First, we’ll discuss how data from RGB and NIR cameras contains blood volume pulse information from human face.
b. Next, we’ll discuss challenges from motion and ambient illumination and methods to address those challenges.
c. Next, we’ll show how advance computer vision, signal processing, and machine learning methods including deep learning are used to extract blood volume pulse, and respiration rate.
d. Next, we’ll discuss how thermal imaging can be used for the study of human psychophysiology.
e. Finally, we’ll discuss next frontiers in remote measurements, and current states.
7. Discussion: (Dr. Abhijit Sarkar, Dr. Lynn Abbott) – (15 minutes)

About the Speaker(s) Dr. Sarkar is a Senior Research Associate in the Virginia Tech Transportation. He leads the computer vision and machine learning group in the division of Data and Analytics. His current research focuses on application of computer vision, machine learning, biometric, and big data analysis for transportation safety, driver health monitoring, human factors, and affective computing. His current work is supported by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), National Science Foundation (NSF) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (NSTSCE), Safety through Disruption (Safe-D) University Transportation Center (UTC), and numerous proprietary companies. Dr. Sarkar has more than 30 technical publications, proceedings, and book chapters. He has software development experience in both academia and industry for 12 years. Dr. Abbott is a Professor at Virginia Tech, where he is a faculty member in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His primary research interests involve Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Biometrics. In the area of biometrics, he has led efforts involving fingerprint analysis, authentication from cardiovascular signals, and facial expression recognition. His work is currently supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Dr. Abbott has authored or coauthored more than 160 technical publications and has been awarded one U.S. patent. He teaches graduate courses in the area of Computer Vision, and undergraduate courses in software development, microcontroller systems, and Artificial Intelligence.






Objectives
With a growing need for mass data visualization, most business and consumer applications need to display compelling data Visualizations to Improve the Impact of their data. One of the primary ways to present an overview of the system status and content is building a persuasive dashboard that facilitates decision making and augments cognition. What are the basic principles behind designing effective and intuitive dashboards? This introductory/ intermediate course reviews the fundamentals of data visualization and dashboard design and evaluation of visualization and dashboards. Participants will then evaluate several dashboards and practice building an effective dashboard.

Content and Benefits
The first section of the course will be used to review the fundamental principles in designing dashboards. Participants will then practice evaluating several example dashboards. Following this, the participants will work in teams to build an effective dashboard according to the guidelines and principles taught in the previous section. The course will feature presentations, small group activities, and discussions to enhance learning. The presentations will examine the following topics:
• Introduction • Fundamental Principles of Dashboard Design • Visual Designs • Mass Data Visualization • Evaluating Dashboard User Interfaces • Building Effective Dashboards Target Audience Potential beneficiaries of this course may be: • People who are involved with UI/UX design • People who have some experience with dashboard design • HCI professionals with an interest in UX design • Researchers already working in UX design •

About the Speaker(s) Dr. Abbas Moallem is the executive director of UX Experts, LLC, a UX/UI design and cyber security consultancy in Cupertino, California, and an adjunct professor at San Jose State University, where he teaches Human computer Interaction, Human Factors, Data Visualization and Cyber Security. Abbas is the editor of the Human-Computer Interaction and Cyber Security Handbook published in 2018 and Cybersecurity Awareness among College Students and Faculty published in 2019 by CRC Press. His latest books are “Understanding Cybersecurity Technologies” and “Smart and Intelligent System: The Human Elements in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Cybersecurity” published in 2021 by CRC Press. Dr. Moallem has over 20 years of experience in the fields of human factors, ergonomics, human computer interaction (HCI) and usability. He has also served as a senior engineering product manager and usability expert at NETGEAR, a UI Architect at PeopleSoft, Oracle Corporation, Tumbleweed, and Axway for over 11 years. He has consulted in a variety of industries in Europe, Canada, and the USA.





Objectives
Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, in psycholinguistics, marketing, as an input device for human-computer interaction, and in product design. Eye trackers are also being increasingly used for rehabilitative and assistive applications (related for instance to control of wheel chairs, robotic arms and prostheses). There are a number of methods for measuring eye movement. The most popular variant uses video images from which the eye position is extracted. Other methods use.

About the Speaker(s) Jan Watson, Drexel University, Jan Watson is a researcher at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems in Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA.





 Tutorial Group B - 12:00 - 14:00 (EST) July 26, 2025



Objectives
To design a great UX for your team—by tomorrow afternoon. How much user research, collaboration, and iteration can you do in under 8 hours? Looks like you are going to find out. Good luck! This tutorial will start by quickly reviewing the difference between UX and UI design. We will be doing UX design here, so the proper distinction is important. Next, we will review the most effective design techniques that you can use quickly, applying them to a real design challenge. We will also review some popular techniques that don’t work well when you are in a hurry because they take too much time. We will then review a menu of design approaches you can use if you have 2 days, 8 hours, 4 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes, or even 15 minutes—focusing on what’s worth keeping and what’s worth skipping. And yes, it's possible to design a great UX in 15 minutes if you really must. The heart of the tutorial is the hands-on design challenge. Working in teams, we will choose a combination of techniques that will take about 60 minutes to set a baseline for the design. After the hour, teams will present their results and evaluate the benefit and value of each of the steps they chose. In a series of three followup exercises, teams will choose to apply some of the techniques they skipped and evaluate the impact of each.

About the Speaker(s) Everett McKay is a UX design consultant, trainer, full-stack developer, and founder, with over 30 years' experience and world-wide clientele.





Human Factors and Cybersecurity: 10 Things you need to know to protect yourself and your company from cyber attacks

Every day the number of ransomwares, identity thefts, credit card fraud, email message hacking, etc. grows and costs individuals and institutions both short-term and long-term loss. The press is full of reports of data center breaches that result in loss of intellectual property, trade secrets, and/or customer data and affect the company’s reputation. Successful cyber protection at the individual level or enterprise level is not possible without having well-trained people who are aware of security risks and are knowledgeable enough to make sound judgments when they are confronted with cyber-attacks such as phishing or fraudulent phone calls. The active involvement of employees and their awareness are paramount to a company’s security compliance. The objective of this tutorial is to cover 10 important areas of cybersecurity risks and teach attendees about protective measures. After the completion of this training, session participants will learn practical ways of dealing with cyber-attacks, and a list of actions to take to protect themselves at both the individual and the company level. 1. Trust 2. Authentication 3. Privacy 4. Ransomware 5. Identity Theft 6. Phishing 7. Application Access 8. Social Media 9. Home Networking 10. Surveillance Target Audience Prior knowledge of experience in the field of cybersecurity is not required. Therefore, potential beneficiaries of this course may be: • Students at All levels • All Academics • Professional and Practitioners

About the Speaker(s) Dr. Abbas Moallem is the executive director of UX Experts, LLC, a UX/UI design and cyber security consultancy in Cupertino, California, and an adjunct professor at San Jose State University, where he teaches Human computer Interaction, Human Factors, Data Visualization and Cyber Security. Abbas is the editor of the Human-Computer Interaction and Cyber Security Handbook published in 2018 and Cybersecurity Awareness among College Students and Faculty published in 2019 by CRC Press. His latest books are “Understanding Cybersecurity Technologies” and “Smart and Intelligent System: The Human Elements in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Cybersecurity” published in 2021 by CRC Press. Dr. Moallem has over 20 years of experience in the fields of human factors, ergonomics, human computer interaction (HCI) and usability. He has also served as a senior engineering product manager and usability expert at NETGEAR, a UI Architect at PeopleSoft, Oracle Corporation, Tumbleweed, and Axway for over 11 years. He has consulted in a variety of industries in Europe, Canada, and the US





This tutorial will provide all the basics and essential concepts of Python and Data Science.  It is the process of deriving knowledge and insights from a huge and diverse set of data. It extracts the data from the source and applying data visualization techniques. for this purpose, Data science needs a very versatile yet flexible language for highly complex mathematical processing. Python is most suited for general computing as well as scientific computing. This tutorial will increase awareness and understanding of key issues related to the tutorial topic. Further, they will learn;

•       Concepts and issues related to Data Science.
•       How these concepts relate to Python.
•       Principles and techniques that are useful in Data Science and Python libraries.

Content and Benefits:
This tutorial is suitable for non-programmers as well as programmers who don't know Python. It will help how to do data analyses using the Python language and Pandas The exercises will include the design and evaluation

This tutorial will discuss how both Data Science and Python are interrelated and essential for Data visualization.
This tutorial will include both presentations and practical work.
The tutorial will also provide guidelines for future research

Topics Covered:
•       Basic steps in data science
•       Python: basics, variables, data types, objects, loops, conditions
•       Python: functions, string functions, lists, tuples, dictionaries, sets
•       Exploratory Data analysis by using Jupyter Notebooks, Numpy, pandas etc.

You won't become a full-fledged Python programmer, but you'll learn enough to continue your own Python education afterwards.

About the Speaker(s) Dr.Javed Anjum Sheikh, Associate Profesor/Director CS&IT in the University of Minhaj University Lahore – before that, I was the Assistant Professor/Campus Director/Associate Dean of the University of Lahore, Gujrat Campus and was the Assistant Professor (Associate Director) of the faculty of Computing and IT.





Heuristic evaluation is a well-known technique that evaluates a design based on its compliance with recognized usability principles. Heuristic evaluations have the benefit of being very efficient and focused (for example, an accessibility evaluation is focused on accessibility problems.) However, most practitioners prefer user-based testing because they have more confidence in the results. Ideally, teams should use both, as effective heuristic evaluations make user-based testing more productive by focusing on hard-to-find problems.
But a heuristic evaluation is only as good as the set of heuristics used, and the most popular heuristics are well past their “best by” dates. Arguably the most popular usability heuristics were devised by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich—in 1990! Considering how rapidly UI design has changed, the relevance and practical value of even 5-year-old heuristics should be suspect. Less popular heuristics are often vague and hard to apply meaningfully (example: “…check whether the user has enough control…” What does that even mean?)

This tutorial will consist of two parts. In Part 1, we will quickly review the most well-known usability heuristics, plus a summary of the top design principles recommended by the most popular platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac). The class will break into three teams (representing desktop, web, and mobile), and devise their own usability heuristics using a structured process. The focus of the results will be on their practical value. At the end of this part, each team will present their results to the class.
For Part 2, we will review the ground rules for effective heuristic evaluations, then as apply our newly created heuristics to desktop, web, and mobile designs (at least one for each platform). The tutorial will end with a discussion about the effectiveness of the evaluations and how to further improve the process.

About the Speaker(s) Everett McKay is Principal of UX Design Edge and a UX design consultant and trainer with global clientele that includes Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa. Everett's specialty is finding practical, intuitive, simple, highly usable solutions quickly for web, mobile, and desktop applications. Everett has over 30 years' experience in user interface design—and even more programming UIs. (He loves React!)

Everett is author of "Intuitive Design: Eight Steps to an Intuitive UI", the definitive guide to designing intuitive interactions, and "UI Is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interfaces by Focusing on Effective Communication", a groundbreaking approach to UI design using human communication-based principles and techniques. While at Microsoft, Everett wrote the Windows UX Guidelines for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Everett holds a master's degree in computer science from MIT.





Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, computer science and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "ultimate challenge" of the biological sciences. The scope of neuroscience has broadened over time to include different approaches used to study the nervous system at different scales and the techniques used by neuroscientists have expanded enormously, from molecular and cellular studies of individual neurons to imaging of sensory, motor and cognitive tasks in the brain.

About the Speaker(s) Adrian Curtin is a researcher with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Drexel University. His research background focuses on the neuroergonomic application of neuroimaging, particularly in mental health, neurostimulation, and in analysis method development.







 Tutorial Group C - 14:00 - 16:00 (EST) July 26, 2025




Embark on a journey through the fundamental principles of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI), with a primary focus on optimizing designs through ergonomic principles. This tutorial unveils key concepts crucial for crafting user interfaces that not only captivate visually but are also finely tuned for user comfort and efficiency. Many well-designed interfaces fall short due to a lack of incorporation of UX/UI principles rooted in ergonomics. Join us to enhance your awareness, gain insights into key issues, and empower yourself to identify and rectify common mistakes, ultimately elevating both user experiences and ergonomic-centric design. Content and Benefits: Tailored for participants ranging from novice to experienced users, this tutorial begins with an evaluation of various user interfaces, seamlessly integrating essential concepts and practical exercises in UX/UI and ergonomic design. Participants will: • Grasp Key Concepts and Issues: Understand fundamental concepts related to UX and UI within the ergonomic framework, exploring their relevance to user-interface components with a dedicated emphasis on ergonomic considerations. • Acquire Practical Principles and Techniques: Learn actionable principles and techniques essential for effective design, thoughtfully enriched with ergonomic insights. Highlights: • Interrelatedness of UX, UI, and Ergonomics: Uncover the often-overlooked yet crucial interrelation of UX and UI, seamlessly integrated with ergonomic considerations in the design process. • Interactive Learning Experience: Engage in both presentations and hands-on exercises, ensuring a dynamic and immersive learning experience with a keen focus on ergonomic design. • Guidelines for Ergonomically Effective Interfaces: Gain valuable guidelines for creating interfaces that not only please the eye but also adhere to ergonomic principles, enhancing user comfort and satisfaction. Target Audience: This tutorial is designed for a diverse audience, from academic researchers to HCI practitioners, suitable for both novices and experienced users. Professionals in various roles, including Designers (Interaction, Product, Experience, User-Interface, Information Visualization), usability and user-experience Evaluators, Researchers, Software Engineers, and Web Developers, will find valuable insights and practical knowledge to enhance their design practices by seamlessly integrating UX, UI, and Ergonomics.

About the Speaker(s) Dr.Javed Anjum Sheikh, Associate Profesor/Director CS&IT in the University of Minhaj University Lahore – before that, I was the Assistant Professor/Campus Director/Associate Dean of the University of Lahore, Gujrat Campus and was the Assistant Professor (Associate Director) of the faculty of Computing and IT.






Design reviews are often ineffective—way too often! We fail to achieve the goals of the review, have unproductive battles over personal opinion, and perhaps even leave in tears. Even experienced teams have these problems. We need to do better! This workshop explores why traditional design reviews are often ineffective (hint: focusing on personal opinion or minor details never helps), practical tools to make reviews more productive, and different design review techniques. We will explore how to give and receive effective design feedback, and the value of using design review rules—especially for cross-function teams. We will work in teams to perform several design reviews of the same app (a baseline, a streamlined cognitive walkthrough, and a scenario review) to try the different techniques and see the pros and cons of each first hand.


About the Speaker(s) Everett McKay is Principal of UX Design Edge and a UX design consultant and trainer with global clientele that includes Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa. Everett's specialty is finding practical, intuitive, simple, highly usable solutions quickly for web, mobile, and desktop applications. Everett has over 30 years' experience in user interface design—and even more programming UIs. (He loves React!)

Everett is author of "Intuitive Design: Eight Steps to an Intuitive UI", the definitive guide to designing intuitive interactions, and "UI Is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interfaces by Focusing on Effective Communication", a groundbreaking approach to UI design using human communication-based principles and techniques. While at Microsoft, Everett wrote the Windows UX Guidelines for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Everett holds a master's degree in computer science from MIT.







Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, computer science and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "ultimate challenge" of the biological sciences. The scope of neuroscience has broadened over time to include different approaches used to study the nervous system at different scales and the techniques used by neuroscientists have expanded enormously, from molecular and cellular studies of individual neurons to imaging of sensory, motor and cognitive tasks in the brain.

About the Speaker(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s): Dr. Adrian Curtin, Drexel University

Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, computer science and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "ultimate challenge" of the biological sciences. The scope of neuroscience has broadened over time to include different approaches used to study the nervous system at different scales and the techniques used by neuroscientists have expanded enormously, from molecular and cellular studies of individual neurons to imaging of sensory, motor and cognitive tasks in the brain.

About the Speaker(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)(s): TBD