The Effect of Touch-key Size and Shape on the Usability of Flight Deck MCDU

This paper focuses on the effect of touch-key size and shape on the usability of the multifunction control display unit (MCDU) of the flight deck. A total of thirty subjects participated in the trials on the touchscreen-MCDU to perform the task of preflight preparation. The sizes of the touch-key were 7mm, 10mm, 13mm, 16mm, 19mm and 22mm; the touchkeys were divided into two shapes: rectangle and square ones. The completion time of the task, the error rate and participants’ subjective ratings were collected as the indicators of the usability, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was done to test the data. Results showed that both touch-key size and shape affected the usability. The usability of the touchscreenMCDU increased as the touch-key size increased up to a certain size (19 mm in this study), at which they reached asymptotes. The square touch-keys provided a better usability than the rectangle ones when the width was the same. However, when the width reached 19mm, the usability stayed the same

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