A Comprehensive Movement Compatibility Study for Hong Kong Chinese

This paper reviews a study, which used real mechanical controls, of strength and reversibility of direction-of-motion stereotypes and response times for most common control–display configurations in the human–machine interface for Hong Kong Chinese. The effect of instructions for the change of display value and control plane on movement compatibility for various control–display configurations was analyzed with precise quantitative measures of strength and reversibility index of the stereotype. The results showed that the best control–display configuration was the rotary control–circular display combination. The performance of the rotary control–digital counter, rotary control–horizontal scale, and the fourway lever–circular display configurations were of comparable magnitude. The poorest configurations found in this study were the four-way lever–digital counter and the rotary control–vertical scale combinations. In general, subjects’ response times were found to be longer when there were no clear movement stereotypes. The results of this study provide significant implications for the industrial design of control panels used in human–machine interfaces for improved human performance.