Wash Away Your Troubles: Examining the Effect of Organization and Information Availability with a Car Wash Cashier Interface. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Welk, Allaire K.; Stokes, Thomas A.; Zielinska, Olga A.; Mudrick, Nicholas
• Is Part Of: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society ... Annual Meeting. Volume 58:Part 1(2014)
• Page Start: 1998
• Page End: 2002
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: Human engineering -- Congresses; 620.8205
• DOI: 10.1177/1541931214581417
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1541-9312

Abstract

An existing car wash user interface was evaluated and redesigned to improve novice and experienced-user performance by implementing human factors methods. Researchers conducted a heuristic evaluation, user needs, environmental, and task analyses to outline usability issues within the existing system, in addition to critical considerations regarding the redesign. Results revealed five areas of difficulty within the existing system: organization, visibility, visual distractions, system feedback, and error correction. Researchers generated design strategies to mitigate the aforementioned areas of difficulty, and incorporated them into prototype iterations. A/B usability testing was conducted with the prototype iterations to compare novice and experienced-user performance with horizontal and vertical navigation bars containing and excluding price information. Results indicated that overall the revised system was a success, with the horizontal no price iteration being most effective. However, there were several remaining areas of difficulty that require further modification and testing.