Effectiveness of direct manipulation interaction in the supervisory control of flexible manufacturing systems

The use of direct manipulation interface technology may be a valuable design technique for operator interaction and control with real-time, supervisory control systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of a direct manipulation interface, two user interfaces to a simulation of a flexible manufacturing system were developed. One was a conventional, alphanumeric interface and the other was a direct manipulation, graphical interface. Five measures that reflected operator performance were analyzed. Subjects using the direct manipulation interface operated the system significantly better on three of the five measures.