Cross-Cultural Study On Operating Performance Of Interface Design Methods

Due to rapid growth in both IT industry and software development, humancomputer interaction (HCI) is becoming more and more important. Complexsocio-technical systems, such as a nuclear power plant, are an example of a criticalHCI. Most of errors in such systems were made by human. Moreover, people fromdifferent backgrounds have different ways of thinking that influence their operatingperformance during execution of the task. After examining this problem, it was foundthat computer interface can play an important role. A good interface design can helpto decrease the number of human errors.This study investigates the effects of cultural backgrounds and interface designmethods and their interactions on operating performance when using EmergencyOperating Procedure (EOP) for Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The western Europeansand the central Asians are considered in the cultural background factor. Anexperiment was conducted in China and Kazakhstan to examine the above effectswith30participants for each population group.Several variables were considered in this study, including control, independentand dependent variables. Control variables include high time pressure, noise,temperature, and light levels. Independent variables include time, error rate, situationawareness and subjective workload. And two independent variables are interfacedesign methods and population groups.The main part of this study is on the influence of interface design method onoperation time, error rate, error recovery, situation awareness, and subjective taskload under high time pressure. The interface design method had two levels: traditionaland ecological interface design (EID).The results have indicated the main effects of interface design method onoperation time (time for execution the task, T0judgment time, Ti examination time),error rate, error recovery, situation awareness (total score in random testing, focus score rate), and subjective task load of population groups from different culturalbackgrounds.There was no interaction found between two variables (population groups andinterface design method) as for time for execution the task. It was necessary to testhypothesis about the main effects of population groups and interface design methods.The hypothesis for population groups was rejected. The variable population groupshad influence on time for execution of task. However, hypothesis for interface designmethod was not rejected. The variable interface had no influence on time forexecution of the task.There was no interaction found between two variables (population groups andinterface design methods) as for T0judgment time. It was necessary to test hypothesisabout the main effects of population groups and interface design methods. Thehypothesis for population groups was rejected. The variable population groups hadinfluence on the T0judgment time. The hypothesis for interface design method wasalso rejected. The variable interface design methods had influence on the T0judgment time.There was no interaction found between two variables (population groups andinterface design methods) as for Ti examination time. It was necessary to testhypothesis about the main effects of population groups and interface design methods.The hypothesis for population groups was rejected. The variable population groupshad influence on the Ti examination time. The hypothesis for interface designmethods was also rejected. The variable interface design methods had influence onthe Ti examination time.As for error rate, the results of population groups and interface design methodsshowed that there was no significant difference in their error rate distributions. It wasrequired to examine the possible interactive effects. For both population groups, thedata was divided into two interfaces. The results showed that the difference of allgroups with two interface designs was not significant.There was no interaction found between two variables (population groups and interface design methods) as for total score in random testing. It was necessary to testhypothesis about the main effects of population groups and interface design methods.The hypothesis for population groups was rejected. The variable population groupshad influence on total score in random testing. The hypothesis for interface designmethods was also rejected. The variable interface design methods had influence ontotal score in random testing.As for focus score rate, the results of population groups and interface designmethods showed that there was a significant difference in their accuracy ratedistributions. It was necessary to examine the possible interactive effects. Thestatistics for Europeans showed that the difference of all groups with two interfacedesigns was not significant. The statistics for Kazakhs showed that the difference ofall groups with two interface designs was also not significant.There was no interaction found between two variables (population groups andinterface design method) as for subjective task load. It was necessary to testhypothesis about the main effects of population groups and interface design methods.The hypothesis for population groups was not rejected. The variable populationgroups had no influence on the subjective task load. The hypothesis for interfacedesign methods was not rejected. The variable interface design methods had noinfluence on the subjective task load.Error recovery was not examined in this study due to insufficiency of data to usein SPSS.The ecological interface design method showed its advantages over traditionalinterface design method. The results of this study prove the supposition that operatingperformance is influenced by culture. Therefore, this study can be helpful inunderstanding of the differences.