Inducing effective operator control through ecological interface design

✍ Scribed by William S. Pawlak; Kim J. Vicente

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 463 KB
• Volume: 44
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1071-5819
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1996.0028

✦ Synopsis

Ecological Interface Design (EID) is a theoretical framework for designing interfaces for complex human -machine systems . This article investigates the utility of EID in inducing ef fective real-time operator control performance during both normal and abnormal conditions . Two interfaces for a thermal-hydraulic process were compared , an EID interface based on physical and functional (P ϩ F) system representations and a more traditional interface based solely on a physical (P) representation . Subjects were given 4 weeks of daily practice with one of the two interfaces before their performance on normal events and unfamiliar faults was evaluated . Under normal conditions , there was no performance dif ference between the P ϩ F and P interfaces . However , dual task results indicate that the P interface loads more on verbal resources , whereas the P ϩ F interface loads more on spatial resources during normal trials . Furthermore , a process tracing analysis of the fault trials showed that the P ϩ F interface led to faster fault detection and more accurate fault diagnosis . Moreover , the P ϩ F subjects exhibited a more sophisticated and ef fective set of fault management strategies that are similar to those observed in field studies of experienced operators in complex human -machine systems . In addition , a deficiency of the P ϩ F interface was identified , suggesting a need for integrating historical information with emergent feature displays . Collectively , these findings have significant practical implications for the design of advanced computer interfaces for complex industrial systems .