Movement compatibility for frontal controls with displays located in four cardinal orientations

Abstract

Strength and reversibility of direction-of-motion stereotypes and response times are presented for different configurations of horizontal, vertical and rotary controls with horizontal, vertical and circular displays. Measures of the strength and reversibility of stereotypes were used to analyse the effects of direction of turn instruction (clockwise/anticlockwise; up/down; left/right), display orientation (North; East; South; West) and hand side (left/right) on movement compatibility. A number of acceptable display/control arrangements were identified for displays in each of the North, East, South and West orientations relative to the operator. For the horizontally moving control, the Worringham and Beringer principle was found to identify display/control arrangements having both high stereotype strength and high reversibility. Vertically moving controls are excellent with vertical displays but poor with horizontal and circular displays. Rotary controls have high stereotype strength and reversibility with both horizontal and circular displays (with the indicator at the 12 o'clock position).

Statement of Relevance:Design of display/control arrangements requires a strong relationship between operator's expectancies and the response of a device to control inputs. The present research fills in gaps for stereotypes where data are not available, in particular where the operator is not seated facing a display directly to the front.

Keywords:

• movement compatibility
• display orientation
• stereotype reversability
• control and display

Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was supported by the Strategic Research Grant 7008055 from the City University of Hong Kong. The authors thank Wong Tung Chit for assistance with carrying out the experiments reported in this paper. The authors wish to thank Professor Christopher Wickens and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments in preparing this paper.