Movement Compatibility for Rotary Control and Digital Display

Using real mechanical controls, this experiment studied strength and reversibility of direction-of-motion stereotypes and response times for different configurations of digital display and rotary control. The effect of instruction of change of number direction (I) and control plane (P) on movement compatibility was analyzed with precise quantitative measures of strength and reversibility index of stereotype. A comparison between the results obtained in this experiment with that of rotary controls and circular display was made. There was similarity in the results of the two tests that both setups contain strong and reversible stereotypes. It was demonstrated that strong and significantly reversible clockwise-for-clockwise (CC) and anticlockwise-for-anticlockwise (AA) stereotypes were found with the use of circular display, and strong clockwise-for-increase (CI) and anticlockwise-for- decrease (AD) stereotypes were found with the digital display. Subjects' response times were found to be generally longer when there were no clear movement stereotypes. Nevertheless differences of results were observed in terms of variation in the stereotype strength and reversibility amongst different testing configurations in the two experiments, and the rotary control-digital display pair did not work as well as that of the rotary control-circular display pair. In the analysis of the contributions of component principles to overall stereotypes, the results were explained in terms of a number of common control operating principles. The results of this study provided significant implications for the industrial design of control panels used in man machine interfaces for improved human performance.