Industrial attachment at DSO National laboratories : evaluation of on screen navigational methods for a touch screen device

Abstract

For the duration of the Industrial Attachment (IA) in Defense Science Organization (DSO) National Laboratories, I was assigned to the Human Factors Engineering (HFE) department. Here, I proposed and conducted a study to design and evaluate control methods for a touch screen device that would enable effective navigation of an environment. This study was proposed in anticipation of the implementation of mobile touch screen devices to be used to operate unmanned vehicles. In total, 6 different control methods were designed. To evaluate the fore-mentioned controls, computer simulations were developed with Adobe Flash CS4. This is a program that can be used to create interactive computer applications. Experimentation involving 20 test participants was conducted. The experiment required the participants to conduct navigational tasks on the simulation. After the experiment, the data collected were analyzed. The analysis compared each control method against the number of errors committed, the time taken for task completion as well as the number of taps on the screen. Subsequently, the controls were commented upon and recommendations were made on how to improve these controls.