The impact of on-road motion on BMS touch screen device operation

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of vehicle motion on performance, usability and workload for a touch screen in-vehicle Battle Management System (BMS). Participants performed a series of battle management tasks while a vehicle was driven over sealed (characteristic of ‘normal’ vehicle motion) and unsealed (characteristic of ‘high’ vehicle motion) roads. The results indicate that unsealed road conditions impair the performance of information input tasks (tasks that require the user to enter information, e.g. text entry) but not information extraction tasks (tasks that require the user to retrieve information from the system, e.g. reading coordinates). Participants rated workload as higher and the system as less usable on the unsealed road. In closing, the implications for in-vehicle touch screen design and use in both military and civilian driving contexts are discussed.

Practitioner Summary: The effect of motion on interacting with in-vehicle touch screen devices remains largely unexplored. This study examines the effect of different levels of vehicle motion on the use of a BMS. Using the system under off-road conditions had a detrimental impact on workload, performance and usability.

Keywords:

• motion
• human–computer interaction
• vehicle
• touch screen

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted in partnership with staff from DSTO's Land Operations Division. We particularly acknowledge the on-going technical input and project management provided by Justin Fidock and Omio Abedin and are appreciative of Vic Demczuk and Greg Judd for making their BMS task available to us, providing guidance on the use of the BMS task and for the loan of the touch screen monitor that was used to provide participants with practice on the BMS task. Dr. Paul Salmon's contribution to this paper was funded through his Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Public Health post doctoral fellowship.