Cognitive ergonomics of a mail order filling company: part 1 - influence of colour, position and highlighting on recognition time.

Filling mail order request forms requires the picker to determine if the items ordered on the form are in his/her bay, reading the bin address and picking the item. An order form was investigated to determine if ergonomics improvements would result in improved productivity and accuracy. Colour, position and highlighting cues were systematically varied in a computer-simulated version of the picking task. It was concluded that colour and position significantly influence the processing time, while highlighting had no effect on processing time. Expert pickers were slower, but more accurate than the novice pickers. Recommendations for improving the order forms were made and implemented, with very encouraging results.