Evaluation of human-system interfaces with different information organization using an eye tracker

Abstract

The increasing use of digitalized displays in the instrumentation & control systems of nuclear power plants has brought new issues related to human-computer interaction, especially under emergency circumstances that are known to be very stressful. This paper studies how interfaces with different information organization (functional layout vs. process layout) influence human-computer interaction behaviors as emergency occurs in terms of search efficiency, difficulty of information abstraction, and workload by using the eye tracking technique on a simulated platform. The result shows that the average blink rate and average blink numbers at the two levels of information organization were different significantly. This may indicate that the functional design was superior to the process design in user workload. The results did not prove the superiority of the functional interface design to the process one in search efficiency and difficulty of information abstraction, since no significant difference was found in the number of fixations and fixations duration mean values. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.