The main objective of this paper was to investigate the effects of a computer screen interface design and its related geometrical characteristics of 36 graphical objects on a user's task efficiency. A total of 490 subjects took part in laboratory experiments that focused on the direct manipulation of a visual dialogue between a user and a computer. The subjects were asked to select an object from among a group of items randomly placed on the computer screen that were visible exclusively during the visual search process. A model expressing the mean object acquisition time as a function of graphical object size and the configuration was developed and statistically validated. The model showed an influence of geometrical design characteristics of the graphical objects (icons) and their groupings (icon structures) on the observed task efficiency. The reported results can be used at those stages of a software lifecycle that concentrate on prototyping, designing, and implementing graphical solutions for the efficient graphical user-computer interface.

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The main goal of this research was the analysis of persons' attitudes towards digital graphical information regarding various types of smartphone's virtual package designs. Sixty students from two different faculties were involved in the study. Both the faculty and gender effects were controlled. The packages were electronically presented to the subjects on the computer screen. A binary pairwise procedure within the framework of the conjoint analysis was employed to assess the examinees' preferences. The experimental stimuli differed in the brand name location in relation to the product image (left and right hand side), background colors used (grey and pink), and the typography applied to the brand name (big and compact text versus small with the increased interletter spacing). The main results showed significant effects of brand name location and typography along with significant interactions concerned with the background package color. Generally, males preferred grey variants while females -pink. These results analyzed along with the conjoint analysis outcomes surprisingly show that the background color was the main factor influencing males' preferences while for women it was the least important issue. The cluster analysis results demonstrated significant interpersonal discrepancies and identified three, similar in number, groups sharing common preference structures.

The paper presents a novel version of the simulated annealing algorithm based on linguistic patterns (LP) and fuzzy theory approach. The article describes shortly the linguistic patterns and shows on a simple illustrative example the idea of using the Łukasiewicz formula as a criterion for the facility layout optimization. Next, the detailed description of our LP version of simulated annealing is presented. The influence of the proposed algorithm parameters on the effectiveness of our approach is then examined in a simulation experiment involving four different types of facility layout problems. The outcomes from the first experiments are used for optimally setting the parameters of our proposal in the second simulation study focused on verifying its effectiveness for objects with uniform and variable sizes. The obtained results show that the presented procedure, apart from producing decent results in terms of the classic goal function and the linguistic pattern criterion, provided solutions that were qualitatively different than those generated by a crisp version.

Visual inspection is used in many areas due to the potential high costs of inspection error such as injury, fatality, loss of expensive equipment, scrapped items, rework, or failure to procure repeat business. This study presents an application of hidden Markov models (HMM) to fixations' sequences analysis during visual inspection of front panels in a home appliance facility. The eye tracking data are gathered when quality control operators perform their tasks. The results support the difference between expert and novice operator. Moreover, the article demonstrates four HMMs with two and three hidden states both for novice and experienced operators and provides analysis and discussion of the outcomes. Keywords Human factors • Visual inspection • Human visual behavior • Hidden Markov models • Eye tracking technology B Rafał Michalski

Various designs of typical digital control panels were analyzed experimentally from both the effectiveness and efficiency points of view. Subjects performed information comparison tasks aimed at keeping vehicle velocity at the same level. The experiment involved two versions of speedometers for displaying current and target velocities (clock-face and digital). The stimuli were also differentiated by the target velocity value (20, 50 and 80 km/h) and the correct response type (increase or decrease). Subjects' performance results along with the eye-tracking data were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed for all 24 experimental conditions.

This article is concerned with various ways of analyzing the subjective assessment of displaying digital signage content. In the beginning, the brief description of the signage system evolution is described; next, the carried out experiment is depicted. The preferences of the 32 subjects were obtained using pairwise comparisons of the designed screen formats. Then the priorities were derived by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process framework. The gathered data were modeled and analyzed by means of the analysis of variance, multiple regression, and conjoint and factor analyses. The results suggest that the application of different methods of preference analysis may provide additional information that could facilitate more in-depth understanding of the given preference structure. C 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.