Human Limitations in Using a Portable Light Pen Device for Manually Scanning Bar Code Patterns

Abstract

In Experiment I a total of 30 subjects used the device to scan bar code patterns of varying position, orientation and width. The strongest main effects on the dependent variable, proportion of labels scanned in error, were observed for the independent variable, label width. Label widths of 0.1 inch produced error rates of 58.2 percent compared to error rates of 29.6 percent and 24.8 percent for 0.2 inch and 0.3 inch width labels, respectively. Experiment II examined learning effects and showed that label scanning accuracy leveled off after scanning 400 to 500 labels.

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