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While statistics is recognized as an important topic (or necessary evil) in the area of human-computer interaction (HCI) and other scientific fields, it is also a topic that spurns continuous debate. The current practice is that, despite extensive developments in the area of statistics in the last decades, most practitioners stick to the most simple parametric methods. Increasingly, we see the argument arise that scientists will have to resort to more advanced methods, which are unfortunately only available in advanced statistical packages that require a specific (often, command-line) syntax and a substantial understanding of the underlying statistical principles. This talk introduces and discusses a new program, called Illmo, for performing statistics. In order to operate the program successfully, the user only needs to understand a single statistical principle, i.e., the likelihood as a goodness-of-fit measure between the actual data and the proposed statistical model. Illmo is unique in the sense that it not only provides extensive graphical renderings of the data analysis results, but provides an advanced visual interface for navigating between different data analysis methods. A one-week course on statistics with non-mathematically trained students (i.e., design students) confirmed that the program is relatively easy to operate and understand, which allowed students to come up with original ideas for how to apply the program within their own design practice.
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