A study on the vertical navigation of high rise buildings

Abstract

Scroll bar and stab touch screen controls were designed and compared to a soft keyboard to help firefighters perform vertical navigation tasks for high-rise buildings depicted on a graphical display. 18 male subjects were asked to accomplish three experimental tasks: 1) input floor number and navigate to the floor, 2) switch the current floor to another one that was two floors higher/lower, and 3) check around the floors in the high rise to find the one on fire. Task completion time and number of screen operations were recorded. Results showed that, keyboard method of floor selection was the fastest, and scroll bar the slowest. In Task 1 and Task 2, the least number of screen operations were shown with soft keyboard. But in Task 3, keyboard was slowest. The other two control methods were not sensitive to tasks. Design implications for scroll bar and stab controls are discussed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.