For three decades, MediaLab and DirectRT have been recommended by the researchers who use them — on the SPSP listserv, in peer-reviewed journals, and in labs on six continents. A sampling is collected here.
“Among the reviewed packages, DirectRT achieves the most complexity reduction. A simple experiment is most easily implemented with DirectRT’s simple list-structure syntax — essentially reducing the task to specifying the stimulus, its location, and presentation time in a text editor … DirectRT would be the package of choice where a quick start with experimenting is the major objective.”
When researchers on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) listserv have polled each other about experiment software — in 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2007 — MediaLab and DirectRT came out on top each time.
Quotes from researchers who submitted reviews and from public SPSP listserv software surveys. Attributed where the respondent identified themselves.
“In the nearly two years that my graduate students and I have been using MediaLab and DirectRT, we have been continually impressed with the extent to which these programs facilitate nearly every aspect of our laboratory research. The nearly intuitive programming, the diverse functionality, and the complete elimination of data entry have made our lab more efficient from the very first day.”
“MediaLab is a fantastic software tool that allows graduate students with a minimum level of computer expertise to program their own relatively complex multi-media experiments. Students find the program to be not only extraordinarily useful, but fun to interact with as well.”
“A stunning breakthrough: at last a software package is able to bring the vivid possibilities of computer multimedia to the laboratory, and all without any advanced programming skills required. MediaLab raises the computer experiment to a whole new aesthetic level.”
“I have been using the Empirisoft suite (MediaLab / DirectRT) for several years now, and together they have been able to fulfill all of my research needs. The tutorials are straightforward and quick — once you’ve been through them you can program a large variety of experiments in a short period of time.”
“MediaLab and DirectRT will be perfect for you. I’ve been using both since 1999 and have nothing but praise — extremely easy to use, and relatively powerful in terms of what you can do with them.”
“There seems to be a strong preference for MediaLab and the corresponding RT tool, DirectRT. Only strong suggestions in favour of MediaLab were reported — literally every respondent who was using MediaLab seemed to be pleased with it.”
“By far the most recommended software was DirectRT, especially for its ease of use.”
“We have found MediaLab to be easy to use and pretty flexible … our research group became proficient in a relatively short time frame. We would add our names to the list of those recommending MediaLab.”
“Excellent support. If you e-mail them with questions about how to do something, they are always very helpful and reply promptly. That’s been a huge plus for me.”
A roll-call of universities, colleges, and research organizations that have licensed MediaLab and DirectRT over the years — across the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia. If your institution is on here, welcome back.
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