An evaluation of touchscreen versus keyboard/mouse interaction for large screen process control displays Benjamin Noah, Jingwen Li, Ling Rothrock * Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Penn State University, State College, PA 16801, USA article info Article history: Received 28 November 2016 Received in revised form 16 April 2017 Accepted 21 April 2017 Keywords: Touchscreen Interaction method Process control display Touch input abstract The objectives of this study were to test the effect of interaction device on performance in a process control task (managing a tank farm). The study compared the following two conditions: a) 4K-resolution 55“ screen with a 21” touchscreen versus b) 4K-resolution 55 00 screen with keyboard/mouse. The touchscreen acted both as an interaction device for data entry and navigation and as an additional source of information. A within-subject experiment was conducted among 20 college engineering students. A primary task of preventing tanks from overfilling as well as a secondary task of manual logging with situation awareness questions were designed for the study. Primary Task performance (including tank level at discharge, number of tank discharged and performance score), Secondary Task Performance (including Tank log count, performance score), system interaction times, subjective workload, situation awareness questionnaire, user experience survey regarding usability and condition comparison were used as the measures. Parametric data resulted in two metrics statistically different means between the two conditions: The 4K-keyboard condition resulted in faster Detection þ Navigation time compared to the 4K-touchscreen condition, by about 2 s, while participants within the 4K-touchscreen condition were about 2 s faster in data entry than in the 4K-keyboard condition. No significant results were found for: performance on the secondary task, situation awareness, and workload. Additionally, no clear significant differences were found in the non-parametric data analysis. However, participants showed a slight preference for the 4K-touchscreen condition compared to the 4K-keyboard condition in subjective re- sponses in comparing the conditions. Introducing the touchscreen as an additional/alternative input device showed to have an effect in interaction times, which suggests that proper design considerations need to be made. While having values shown on the interaction device provides value, a potential issue of visual distraction exists when having an additional visual display. The allocation of visual attention between primary displays and the touchscreen should be further investigated. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the process control room, operators need to supervise dy- namic processes, recognize unplanned disturbances and anticipate them before they occur so that the proper corrective measures can be carried out in order to ensure steady state operation. Thus, interaction with process control displays has attracted much attention from industry and academic since operators rely on these displays to receive information. While many challenges have been overcome through the application of good human-centered display design, the constant arrival of new technology provides industry with both solutions and alternative challenges. New technology may be capable of providing useful features which were not pre- viously available, but at the same time can create new issues. Us- ability and safety requirements need to be verified prior to implementation of new technology. For example, head-mounted displays (HMD) have been shown to provide potential benefits within multiple domains (Phipps, 2013; Ruddle et al., 1999). Heads up displays (HUD) is a similar technology which can be used for improving control in robotics (Eliav et al., 2011). Gesture control is being researched for navigation and basic control (e.g., Alcoverro et al., 2013; Eliav et al., 2011). Going a step further, physiological (brain and body) techniques for control experiments have also been conducted (e.g., Nelson et al., 1997). While all of these technological advancements present opportunities for improving the human- machine system, implementation of these newer technologies * Corresponding author. E-mail address: lxr28@engr.psu.edu (L. Rothrock). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Ergonomics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2017.04.015 0003-6870/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Applied Ergonomics 64 (2017) 1e13