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The Effect of Touch-key Size and Shape on the Usability of Flight Deck MCDU

Authors:
Lijing Wang
Qiyan Cao
Jiaming Chang
Chaoyi Zhao

Keywords: touch screen; flight deck; MCDU; touch-key size; interface

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the effect of touch-key size and shape on the usability of the multifunction control display unit (MCDU) of the flight deck. A total of thirty subjects participated in the trials on the touchscreen-MCDU to perform the task of preflight preparation. The sizes of the touch-key were 7mm, 10mm, 13mm, 16mm, 19mm and 22mm; the touch-keys were divided into two shapes: rectangle and square ones. The completion time of the task, the error rate and participants’ subjective ratings were collected as the indicators of the usability, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was done to test the data. Results showed that both touch-key size and shape affected the usability. The usability of the touchscreen-MCDU increased as the touch-key size increased up to a certain size (19 mm in this study), at which they reached asymptotes. The square touch-keys provided a better usability than the rectangle ones when the width was the same. However, when the width reached 19mm, the usability stayed the same for both shapes.

Pages: 234 to 238

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: February 22, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-382-7

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from February 22, 2015 to February 27, 2015