Objective: The objective of this study is to identify the gender differences of judgment accuracy and time and gaze movement in the situation judgment task using the visual interface screen.
Background: Since humans receive more than 80% of their information through vision, the visual interface has been used as an important tool for providing information for situation judgment in the system. Due to the advancement of digital technology, humans often perform surveillance tasks in human-machine systems. Due to such changes in the work environment, the role of female workers in human-machine systems is increasing. Consequently, the comparative analysis of male and female task performance in the situation judgment task through the visual interface screen has an important meaning.
Method: The nuclear power plant accident response support system developed through the EID (Ecological Interface Design) method was used as a visual interface prototype. The problem of judging the situation was developed by considering the diversity of the task of judging the situation by looking at the visual interface screen.
After formulating the problems, experimental scenarios that included each of these problem situations were developed. A total of 16 engineering students, eight males and eight females, participated in the experiment as subjects. The experiment was conducted in a quiet laboratory with participants wearing eye trackers. For the analysis of gaze movement, heat map entropy was utilized.
Results: The accuracy of judgment in the situation judgment task utilizing the visual interface screen was slightly higher in women than in men. However, the difference was not large. In addition, judgment time and heat map entropy in the situation judgment task did not show statistically significant differences according to gender.
Conclusion: These results suggest that there is no necessity to distinguish gender in situation judgment tasks in human-machine systems.
Application: The results of this study can be used as basic data to consider gender characteristics in visual interface design.