A Micro-Task Method for Assessing Performance Effects of Innovative Interface Elements

This paper describes a data collection method for obtaining high volumes of performance data from a short testing session. The method is aimed at documenting the performance benefits and drawbacks of innovative interface features in terms of identification times and error rate on a component and system level. Higher-level aspects of control room operation, such as teamwork, communication, context and situation awareness, are not currently within the scope of this method (we consider this methodology as one element of a larger evaluation process where these higher-level aspects are tested separately). The benefits of this methodology are economy of data collection (amount of data points per unit of time), economy of analysis, objectivity of measures, and clarity of results.