Inadequately presented information and its effect on the cognitive workload

The design and handling of information in manual assembly is becoming increasingly important in achieving effective and competitive assembly. However, the information provided to the assembly personnel in the automotive industry is usually poorly designed and presented, which can cause unnecessary mental stress and increase cognitive workload. Due to inadequate information, the original goals are placed aside and the workers are forced to figure out where the right information is located and how to access it within the system. One way of supporting the assembler could be to use kitting, which is a material supply principle where the assembler is provided with a kit of components that together support one or more assembly operations. The kit can also be considered as a carrier of information that complements or even replaces conventional assembly instructions. The aim of this paper is to initiate a theoretical exploration of the relationship between the assembler’s information needs and the kitting box, by investigating the kitting box and its potential to provide enough information for the assembler to fulfil the assembly task

Empirically evaluating and developing alarm rate standards for liquid pipeline control room operators

The liquid and gas pipeline community has recently been faced with the challenge of new governmental regulations set forth by congress which are being implemented by PHMSA (an arm of the DOT). These new governmental regulations need to understand the role of the human in the loop as part of alarm management systems. To investigate alarm rate standards a repeated measures design was developed that included a series of ten (10) simulated liquid pipeline operator scenarios utilizing high fidelity liquid pipeline simulation software (Stoner Pipeline Simulator). A total of 39 participants volunteered for this study. Participants completed two subsets of experiments, five were completed using an alarm display presenting alarms by time (chronological) and the remaining five experiments were completed using a categorical alarm display. Statistically significant differences were found to exist in participant response time, acknowledgement time, and accuracy of response given different alarm display types and alarm rates. Use of the categorical alarm display resulted in significantly reduced alarm acknowledgement and response times. Also, a severe operator performance reduction with regard to alarm handling was observed when the alarm rate was increased from ten alarms per ten minutes (10-alarms/10-minutes) to twenty alarms per ten minutes (20-alarms/10-minutes)

An investigation of cognitive aspects affecting human performance in manual assembly

Modern manufacturing systems seem to be shifting from mass production to mass customisation, which means that systems must be able to manage changes in customer demands and requirements, new technology as well as environmental demands. This in turn leads to an increase in product variants that need to be assembled. To handle this issue, well designed and presented information is vital for assembly workers to perform effective and accurate assembly tasks. In this thesis the main focus has been to find factors that affect human performance in manual assembly. A literature review was made on the subject of manufacturing and usability as well as basic cognitive abilities used to utilise information, such as memory. This investigation identified applicable factors for assessing human cognitive performance within the research field of manufacturing. The thesis further investigates how some of these factors are handled in manual assembly, using case studies as well as observational studies. The results show that how material and information are presented to the assembler needs to be considered in order to have a positive effect on the assembly operation. In addition, a full factorial experimental study was conducted to investigate different ways of presenting material and information at the workstation while using mixed assembly mode with product variants. The material presentation factor involved the use of a material rack compared to using an unstructured kit as well as a structured kit and the information presentation factor involved using a text and number instruction compared to a photograph instruction. The results showed that using a kit is favourable compared to the traditional material rack, especially when using a structured kit combined with photographic instruction. Furthermore, the use of unstructured kits can lead to better productivity and reduced perceived workload, compared to a material rack. Although they are perhaps not as good as using a structured kit, they most likely bring a lower cost, such as man-hour consumption and space requirements. However, the number of components in an unstructured kit needs to be considered in order to keep it on a manageable level. As a conclusion, several scenarios were developed in order to understand how different assembly settings can be used in order to improve human performance at the assembly workstation

Interactive visualisation for low literacy users

Sixteen percent (5.2 million) of the UK population possess low levels of literacy. The Government and other non-profit organisations, due to funding reforms, are forced to reduce the provision of face-to-face advice, and therefore, are pushing advice services via telephone or internet. As a consequence, low literacy users are experiencing difficulties finding the information they need to solve their day to day problems online. This thesis evaluates how walk in clients of a local Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) who come to get social service information, obtain information online using the Adviceguide website. The thesis presents two challenges: (i) knowing the users in a way that can help consider design solutions that are probably not in a typical designer’s standard repertoire of design patterns, and (ii) knowing what is the problem that needs to be addressed. It is not simply an issue of usability or the need for simpler language, but understanding that these low literacy users are very different from the high literacy users. These low literacy users need this information to solve their day-to-day problems and are likely to be less successful in doing so. By providing an information architecture that permits them of a reasoning space and context, while supporting less abstract skills by visualized information in an unconventional way. The above challenges leave us with these research questions to address: what is the basis of such a design, how can these designs be incorporated into existing non-traditional interface proof of concept and finally how can these designs be evaluated