Sensor Noise and Ecological Interface Design: Effects of Increasing Noise Magnitude on Operators' Performance

Abstract

We studied the impact of sensor noise on operators' performance using a display based on the Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework with a representative thermal-hydraulic process simulation. A previous study conducted by St-Cyr and Vicente (2004) showed no difference between EID and non-EID interfaces when the magnitude of sensor noise was randomly increased. In this paper, we describe a study that was designed to investigate the impact of gradually increasing the magnitude of sensor noise on EID versus non-EID interfaces. We hypothesized that as the magnitude of sensor noise increase, performance would worsen for both EID and non-EID participants. Our results suggest that increasing the magnitude of sensor noise does compromise both EID and non-EID interfaces. However, the EID group experienced a significantly larger decrease in performance. This may be explained by the fact that participants in the EID group had to deal with distorted emergent features.

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