Design of Graphic Displays in Computerized Systems

摘要

The user's mental model of a computerized, perceptual database system was investigated in three experiments. The system consisted of a database of multidimensional sounds, command to search the database, and one of three separate displays (two graphic displays for training, an alpha-numeric display for testing). The graphic displays presented different conceptualizations of the database; training with a different graphic display was predicted to cause the formation of a different mental model of the system. The results of three experiments indicated that users trained with one graphic display identified two-dimensional sounds with significantly lower latency (Experiment 1) than users trained with the second graphic display. For three-dimensional sounds these findings with both displays this interaction disappeared (Experiment 3). The results indicate that display design can influence the user's mental model of a system and that this has implications for performance with the system.