Jo Ever­shed

Jo Ever­shed is the Founder CEO of Gorilla Experiment Builder, a pow­er­ful, flex­i­ble and intu­itive plat­form for running behav­iour­al research online that allows researchers to go far beyond surveys. She also con­venes and hosts the Behav­iour­al Science Online Conference.

An Inno­vate UK Women in Inno­va­tion Award Winner, Jo is on a mission to provide behav­iour­al sci­en­tists with tools to lib­er­ate their work from the lab and accel­er­ate research ini­tia­tives that can be tested rig­or­ous­ly at scale. Jo leads a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team of soft­ware engi­neers and psy­chol­o­gists focused on cre­at­ing pow­er­ful and acces­si­ble exper­i­men­tal research infrastructure.

If you’d like me to speak at one of your events, let me know which of these talks would be most appropriate:

Gorilla Demo

Title
Intro­duc­tion to Gorilla — an all-in-one behav­iour­al research platform

Abstract Start your research project right! Dis­cov­er what Gorilla can do (tasks, survey, games, mul­ti­play­er, more …) and how it can make your research life easier by saving you time (and frustration!).

Increas­ing­ly, behav­iour­al research is con­duct­ed via the inter­net. Instead of receiv­ing a par­tic­i­pant in a lab, they take part by click­ing a link from the comfort of their own home, thereby giving researchers access to larger and more diverse samples. The range of research par­a­digms is aston­ish­ing — from eye-track­ing to speech recog­ni­tion and every­thing in between. In this talk, Jo will give a tour of Goril­la’s capa­bil­i­ties and show you (and your stu­dents) how to focus on the science, not the programming.

Online Behav­iour­al Research

Title
Online Behav­iour­al Research — Just a fad, or here to stay?

Abstract
The COVID pan­dem­ic pushed many behav­iour­al researchers online, where they reaped the ben­e­fits of larger samples and faster data col­lec­tion. Now that the pan­dem­ic is ‘over’, will researchers go back to the lab? Or con­tin­ue to embrace these new ways of working?

This talk will show­case the wide range of pos­si­bil­i­ties with online research in fields such as memory studies, motor studies, eye-track­ing studies, & devel­op­men­tal studies. As well has high­light tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties such as mouse-track­ing, eye-track­ing, voice-record­ing, web-cam record­ing, games, mul­ti­play­er studies, shop­ping sim­u­la­tions and more that are now avail­able for main­stream research.

We’ll also explore the con­cerns many researchers have about online research includ­ing worries about data-quality and security.

If you’d like to save a 1/4 of your working year, know what’s pos­si­ble for a future grant pro­pos­al or for teach­ing 21st century research methods, this talk is for you!

Par­tic­i­pant Engage­ment and Data Quality

Title
Tried And Tested Tactics for High Quality Data

Abstract Many researchers worry about col­lect­ing high quality data online. In par­tic­u­lar, how to control par­tic­i­pant atten­tion when they are in a remote environment.

Jo Ever­shed from Gorilla will present the Data Quality Frame­work which shows you how to think about the three ele­ments under your control during the par­tic­i­pant expe­ri­ence so that you can get the best pos­si­ble data from your par­tic­i­pants. We’ll take a look at:

• The rela­tion­ship you form with participants
• The expe­ri­ence you create for them
• The inter­nal con­trols you put in place to iden­ti­fy low quality data

Gam­i­fi­ca­tion

Title
Improve your data quality by fos­ter­ing par­tic­i­pant engagement

Abstract
More engag­ing exper­i­ments means better quality data — par­tic­i­pants are more moti­vat­ed and atten­tive and are less likely to under­per­form due to boredom or fatigue. More­over, visu­al­ly rich expe­ri­ences help you verify your find­ings persist in richer (i.e. more eco­log­i­cal­ly valid) set­tings. With Goril­la’s Game Builder, rich games and game-like expe­ri­ences are acces­si­ble to research sci­en­tists without touch­ing a line of code.

Open Science

Title
The future of Open Science — Indus­try Part­ner­ships for Research Soft­ware Engineers

Abstract
“Give ordi­nary people the right tools, and they will design and build the most extra­or­di­nary things.” Neil Gershenfeld

With more closed-source soft­ware embrac­ing Open Science, it’s time to change the rela­tion­ship between Research Soft­ware Com­pa­nies and in-house Research Soft­ware Engineers.

Join Jo Ever­shed to explore a modern frame­work for lever­ag­ing the best of both research soft­ware and infra­struc­ture soft­ware. This will be brought to life with exam­ples from how Gorilla is sup­port­ing Open Science and empow­er­ing RSEs to support behav­iour­al scientists.