Displays, Acquisition and Performance

Relationships among display forms, visual acquisition, and worker productivity are not well understood. This research investigated three methods of using the VDT with and without hardcopy, with a productivity ratio of seconds per correction as the dependent performance measure for a simplified editing task Three treatment conditions were used. 1) (HR) the manuscript to be edited (target manuscript) was displayed on the VDT with the subject positioning the hardcopy (source manuscript) by preference; 2) (HF) an experimental method with a fixed position source manuscript directly below the VDT; and 3) (SS) an experimental method using 2 windows to display the target manuscript in the top half of the screen and the source manuscript in the bottom half The experimental hypothesis was that the split screen method would provide a significantly more productive method of display than the others The counterbalanced design used four groups of 12 subjects, each performing one of the hardcopy conditions and the split screen condition Findings indicate that the SS method is not more productive than the others, regardless of hardcopy placement Paired t-tests show that productivity improves significantly in both hardcopy conditions following the SS method ANOVAs show that the task order is significant in accounting for productivity variances but prior experience is not