A study on the influence of the designs and configurations of the displays on a motorcycle instrument panel on cognitive effects in Taiwan

Abstract

Motorcycles are highly mobile and the most common vehicles in Taiwan. This study was aimed to investigate the influence of the designs (pointers and graduations) and configurations of each display on the instrument panel of a motorcycle in the market on the cognitive information of a rider in hopes of generalizing rules for instrument panels consistent with ergonomics. In this study, different instrument panel configurations were divided into Experiment 1 (Group A-J) and Experiment 2 (Group K-L) to respectively measure the performance of speedometer, fuel meter, and lights display in reaction time (second), cognitive error, and user satisfaction. According to the research result, Groups I and H were predominant in Experiment I, but the satisfaction of them was low, so the secondary groups, namely Groups C and G, were more suitable. In Experiment 2, both the cognitive effect and satisfaction of Group K were the highest. Consequently, it was concluded in this study that the configurations of motorcycle instrument panels consistent with ergonomics should include the following factors: 1. thin pointers; 2. speedometer on the left; 3. fuel meter on the right; 4. lights display on two sides.