It's rather like a CEO thinking about growing the business without having to think about every nuance and intricacy of accounting. Interactivity such as this allows analysts to "be in the moment." As with all aspects of JMP, they are thinking of their subject matter without the cumbersomeness associated with having to think about statistical methods. Over the last number of releases of JMP, which appear about every 18 months now, they have skipped the dialog boxes to direct, drag-and-drop analyses for building graphs and tables as well as Statistical Process Control Charts.By evaluating these graphical reports of the quality of the design, the analyst can make adjustments, adding or reducing runs, to optimize cost, effort and expected learnings. This can be done before collecting data because this important property of the DOE is a function of the design, not the data. The custom design platform, because it produces uniques designs, provides the means to evaluate just how isolated the effects are. The whole point of DOE is to be able to look at multiple effects comprehensively but determine each one's influence in near or complete isolation.What if you want to investigate these continuous factors along with other categorical factors such as different categorical variables such as materials or different furnace designs and look at the interaction among all factors? This common scenario cannot be handled with conventional designs but are easily accommodated with JMP's Custom DOE platform. For example, a Box-Benhken or other response surface design can have only continuous factors. This means, for example, that you can create a design with just the interactions that are of interest you can selectively choose those interactions that are not of interest and drop collecting their associated combinations. Over the last 15 years, using methods broadly known as an "exchange algorithm," JMP can create designs that are far more flexible than conventional designs. The design of experiments (DOE) platform is simply outstanding and, in fact, the principal developers of it have won several awards.I have spent many lengthy meetings working with the profiler to review design and process options with never a dull moment. You can also specify desirability (maximize, maximize, match-target) and their relative importances to find factor settings that are optimal. You can monitor the effect of changing factors (Xs) and see how they interact with other factors and the responses.
Rather than looking at static figures in a spreadsheet, or a series of formulas, JMP profiles the formulas interactively.
So, unlike other software where you must choose the correct statistical method (eg. JMP's design is centred on the JMP data table and dialog boxes. In fact, JMP operationalizes the most advanced statistical methods. JMP is designed from the ground-up to be a tool for analysts who do not have PhDs in Statistics without in anyway "dumbing down" the level of statistical analysis applied.