Mental Workload and the Display of Abstraction Hierarchy Information

Abstract

In designing large ecological displays, designers are faced with the question of how to display multiple levels of abstract information. Previous research has shown that people may perform better, in terms of diagnosis speed and accuracy, if multiple levels of information are presented in an integrated format (Burns, 2000). We repeated the study of Burns (2000) which looks at providing abstract information in three formats - one level at a time, windowed and integrated. We collected eye tracking data at intervals throughout the experiment. Our eye-tracker was able to collect pupil diameter measures and changes. Results showed no notable difference in pupil diameter measures between the integrated condition and the one level at a time condition, but notably higher increases in pupil diameter when abstract information was in separate windows. Furthermore, pupil diameters increased over time in the windowed condition, suggesting that workload with this display may have been increasing. These preliminary data suggest that separating levels of abstract information may increase the mental workload of operators.