Institute for Telecommunication Sciences / About ITS / 2014 / February 2014 ITS News

February 2014 ITS News

New, Unique Subjective Testing Software Released to GitHub

ITS developed the Web-Enabled Subjective Test (WEST) software to allow researchers to conduct subjective tests on multiple devices with aggregated data collection and reporting. WEST is a very simple way to conduct a subjective test on a mobile device. The devices connect to a server running the WEST software using a web browser. The server transfers stimuli to the device, then the device plays the stimulus and prompts the user for a vote. The software is fully described in NTIA Handbook HB-14-501: Web-Enabled Subjective Test (WEST) Research Tools Manual.

WEST can be a very useful tool. It is, however, in very early stages of development. The code for WEST has now been made available on GitHub as an open source project in the WEST repository under NTIA's account. The subjective testing community is invited to contribute to improving the software through the GitHub collaboration tools.