Reduction of human induced uncertainty through appropriate feedback design

Abstract

Due to the reduction of development periods and a concurrent increase of product complexity, knowledge about the usage and resulting strain of products becomes more and more important. Thereby the human impact on the uncertainty of usage is essential, yet hardly known or quantified. A first approach for the reduction of uncertainty could be the enhancement of information by means of additional feedback. Therefore, a laboratory study is conducted to investigate the amount of uncertainty as well as the impact of feedback on uncertainty, using a simple placement task. The study shows that by enhancing the amount of information given to the user, the systems strain and with this the uncertainty can be reduced significantly. Further an appropriate concept for the representation of information has to be developed, as the mere enhancement of information could also lead to an enhancement of uncertainty.