Visual and auditory feedback to improve touchscreen usability in turbulence

Touchscreens are being introduced to various mobile environments that are, at times, affected by vibrations and turbulence, such as modern car cockpits or flight decks of commercial and military aircraft. To assess and enhance the usability of touchscreens in these domains, this experiment examined the performance effects of turbulence on two flight-related tasks and the effectiveness of visual and auditory feedback for supporting error detection, fast completion times and multitasking. Nineteen pilots performed a flight plan entry and a checklist task in calm and turbulent conditions during manual flight and on autopilot. Results show that unaided performance suffers greatly in turbulence, both in terms of the number of errors and completion time. However, visual and auditory feedback both helped reduce these performance costs by improving error detection and multitasking. Participants preferred auditory feedback for text entry during manual flight and in turbulence. The findings from this study can inform the design and evaluation of touch screens for mobile environments, such as the flight deck, ambulances and surveillance operations.