In developing products or systems, the importance of usability has become increasingly emphasized over the past few decades. An important factor in understanding the usability of an application is the context in which the application is being used. As a part of addressing this issue, we manipulated two task characteristics (i.e., mental workload and operator control) and examined their effects on perceived usability, using a simulated home security system. The experimental results showed that there were significant effects of the mental workload/operator control features on perceived usability. Also, under high mental workload, the interaction between the mental workload and the operator control factors was not sufficiently supported. Possible reasons for the results and some implications for the findings are discussed.
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