Evaluation Metrics and a Tool for Control Panel Design

Abstract

In the use of control panels for the automotive industry, consistency and usability are of major importance. General qualitative guidelines exist for the designer, but there is currently a lack of quantitative human factors data for control panel designs. A state of the art design tool which provides the designer with ergonomic usability guidelines and structure is needed. As part of the current research, a computer-based tool which provides a quantitative analysis of the ergonomic quality of a control panel layout has been created. This tool is a tailored Auto-CAD¹ program for the IBM PC² which provides features to encourage consistency and structure in the design of control panel layouts. Extending the work by Tullis (1983) on alphanumeric display metrics, four graphical metrics for the overall and functional design levels are included as part of the design tool. These metrics are: 1) Overall Density - ratio of free space to occupied space, 2) Local Density - how closely placed the design entities are to each other, 3) Layout Complexity - position irregularity of functional areas, and 4) Display Grouping - number of functions and number of controls and displays. In this effort, the design metrics and the design tool have been developed.

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