AHFE Open AccessIndustrial Cognitive Ergonomics and Engineering Psychology
Editors: Umer Asgher
Topics: Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things
Publication Date: 2022
ISBN: 978-1-958651-11-7
DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001594
Articles
Building Trust and safety Correlates for Autonomous Systems using Physiological, Behavioral, and Subjective Measures
The use of collaborative robots (cobots) in the industrial setting has grown and continues to expand globally, especially in the context of the smart factory. Mistrust and stress results, as cobots don’t provide facial, auditory, and visual cues that workers normally use to predict behavior. For quantification of mental stress, physiological, behavioral and subjective measures are integrated, processed and analyzed in a smart factory lab setting. The impact on the human workers as mental stress and fatigue conditions are correlated with the task complexity, speed of work, length of collaborative task and cobot payload etc. Multimodal functional neuroimaging was used to record participants’ neural and cardiac activity, in addition to the standard subjective and behavioral measures as they collaborated with robots in multitasking contexts. Preliminary results show that task complexity is positively correlated with beta and gamma band power, left prefrontal cortex activation, and heart rate, while it is negatively correlated with alpha band power during task performance.
Zohreh Zakeri, Azfar Khalid, Ahmet Omurtag, Greg Hilliard, Philip Breedon
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Does Acoustic Feedback Increase the Accuracy of Weight and Force Perception during Fine Motor Activities?
It is known from basic research that fine motor activities linked to object handling such as grasping and lifting are almost automatised and highly adapted to the properties of manipulated objects. Object surface properties influence the grip-lift force coupling at object-digit-surface and the object weight perception. Such force-coupling relies on visual and somatosensory processes along with the internal models. Limited or affected somatosensory mechanism could lead to disturbed force efforts and deterioration in object weight perception. Present study was aimed to evaluate the strategy to strengthen the somatosensory mechanism by implementing additional sensory channel (grip force related online acoustic feedback) during a standard weight discrimination task. Participants from both young and old age judged the heaviness of objects with different shapes, compared to a reference object using the precision grip. Results showed that object shape manipulation influenced grip force and weight perception. Integration of additional sense supported the forward model by reducing sensorimotor processing time in both age groups. This indicates the facilitatory impact of multisensory integration on motor control. Moreover, it lowered the discrimination threshold of weight perception and improved the accuracy level. Contrarily, the effect of assistive acoustic feedback on grip force application and weight perception was not significant. We clearly observed the overall aging effects for weight perception and grip force application.
Jai Prakash Kushvah, Gerhard Rinkenauer
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Image Classification for Project-based Learning to Differentiate Diagram and Figures.
This paper describes creation of a dataset and addresses an image processing problem in the field of education. A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based model is trained to classify the images extracted from academic documents. With the advent of distant learning mode and assessment criteria based on online submissions, there is a need to improve assessment approaches other than finding plagiarism. To enhance the understanding of the concepts, project-based learning (PjBL) in distant learning mode (DL) can be adopted. PjBL has proven successful even for complex engineering problems. It has been found out that PjBL of basic teaching assessment decreases the pressure on institutional resources while also making it easier and more practical for students. So, we are considering project reports or assignment as core source of evaluation. Extracting diagrams and software generated images (graphs and software generated object models) is focus for the current work as they reflect knowledge and main effort of a student especially in engineering academics. Here figures are referred as images of schematic representation to show the working or architecture of a work or a phenomenon. Software based images (sbi) include graphs, simulation images and software generated pictures or models. We aim to distinguish the diagrams and sbi from rest of the figures so it can be filtered out for further assessment. The data extracted is in the form of images. A CNN based classification model MobileNet is used to classify the images. The results show viability of the dataset and promising trend keeping in view the difficulty level of problem and size of dataset. Accuracy can be improved by adopting other approaches to train and clean data and by increasing the data set by extracting more images from same domain of problem.
Asmara Safdar, Sara Ali, Muhammad Sajid, Umer Asgher, Yasar Ayaz
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Pupil Dilation Variability as an Indicator of Arousal Regulation: Towards Understanding Operator Functional State
The pupil dilation of fifteen air traffic control students was recorded as they completed the mental counters working memory task. Standard deviation of pupil dilation for each of the 32 trials was computed for each individual and modeled as a growth curve. Pupil dilation variability fluctuated over time in a nonmonotonic manner. Interestingly, the magnitude and direction of pupil dilation variability differed across individuals, suggesting individual differences in arousal regulation. Performance measures of mental counters (i.e., accuracy and response time) were added as predictors to the growth curve model. Higher accuracy was associated with lower pupil dilation variability in general, suggesting better arousal regulation. Longer response times were associated with a greater fluctuation in pupil dilation variability, suggesting longer responses are associated with larger dysregulation of arousal. These findings are important to consider when developing real-time indicators of an operator’s functional state.
Brittany Neilson, Shannon Devlin, Sabrina Drollinger, Noelle Brown, Ciara Sibley, Cyrus Foroughi, Joseph Coyne
Open Access
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Conference Proceedings
Novel Approach for Sensing the Humanoid Hand Finger Position Using Non-contact TMR Sensor
The robotic hand robustness is necessary for different applications. In the past two decades, the magnetoresistance (MR) sensor technology has developed into a new field of magnetic sensing based of tunnel magnetoresistance technology (TMR) that is expanding rapidly. The hand gesture and position of finger can be found out with the help of different kind of sensors each kind of sensor have its challenges as well as the limitations. Smart sensors like TMR can provide multiple information with very small footprint, low power, and cost. This paper presents a novel technique to sense the robotic or human hand finger position with the help of non-contact magnetic field sensor called TMR sensor. The human hand finger position has been measured at four different positions. The results validate that the four finger positions has been detected with the help of single sensor with precision.
Saeed Iqbal, Shahid Nawaz Khan, Muhammad Sajid, Sara Ali, Fahad Iqbal Khawaja, Umer Asgher, Yasar Ayaz
Open Access
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Conference Proceedings
A Chain-Driven Live Roller Mechanism for Loading and Unloading Packages on Autonomous Mobile Robots in Warehouses
Robots that can navigate through their environment are termed mobile robots. Mobile robots are being utilized in various fields, such as agriculture, transport, package delivery, disaster recovery, military, surveillance, and warehouse management. In warehouses, Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) for intralogistics are becoming increasingly common in warehouses. AMRs for intralogistics allow a safer work environment, less need for manual labor, and minimal downtime which translates to optimized productivity. AMRs do not need any specialized infrastructure for guidance as they can be set up with the existing warehouse layout. Presently, AMRs in warehouses need assistance while loading and unloading packages in their storage compartments. Manual loading and unloading is a simple but time-consuming solution. Robotic manipulators are also commonly used for this purpose either mounted on the AMR or present at the conveyor station. Another possible solution is to make use of a tilting platform, or a plate installed on top of the AMR using a hydraulic system that drops off the load by banking the top to one side. This paper proposes an alternate solution for loading and unloading packages on AMRs in warehouses. A chain-driven live roller (CDLR) system is proposed which is installed on top of the AMR. The rollers are driven by a chain that is connected to the rollers via sprockets. The chain is driven by a motor powered by the robot’s battery, so no external power source is needed. The loading can be done by a conveyor belt dropping package to be transported on top of the robot. The robot prevents slippage of the package during transportation by using actuated braces that pop up as soon as the package starts moving over the live rollers. At the drop-off location, the braces drop down and the CDLR is driven automatically by the robot for the drop-off of the package. Chutes or containers can be used as the drop-off location. In addition to simplifying the loading and unloading process, the proposed mechanism optimizes the overall process as it can transport heavy loads without any torque reduction. The proposed system needs minimal human assistance and is more reliable and time-efficient as compared to existing systems.
Muhammad Ammar, Muhammad Moeed Ahmed, Muhammad Abdullah Younas, Khezar Qayyum, Fahad Iqbal Khawaja, Umer Asgher, Sara Ali, Yasar Ayaz
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Personality Prediction in Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI)
For an efficient and smooth human-robot interaction, communication protocols such as verbal and non-verbal communication, emotions, and personality plays an important role. Human-Robot-Interaction is an emerging field and robots are now a part of daily life where it can grasp both verbal and non-verbal cues. Personality prediction is an important research area in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Several important question in personality prediction includes: which personality traits will be important and which specific phycology model and robot do researchers use? Secondly, how emotions, facial expression, paralanguage, and bodily movements are related to personality traits? And finally, how will we acquire data to train a robot and what kind of questionnaires can be used? With the support of prior research studies and experiments, this paper will contribute towards developing the ground basis for personality prediction using a robot.
Anum Jaffer, Sara Ali, Fahad Iqbal Khawaja, Yasar Ayaz, Muhammad Sajid, Umer Asgher
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Trust in an Autonomous Agent for Predictive Maintenance: How Agent Transparency Could Impact Compliance
In the context of Industry 4.0, human operators will increasingly cooperate with intelligent systems, considered as teammates in the joint activity. This human-autonomy teaming is particularly prevalent in the activity of predictive maintenance, where the system advises the operator to advance or postpone some operations on the machines according to the projection of their future state. Like in human-human cooperation, the effectiveness of cooperation with those autonomous agents especially depends on the notion of trust. The challenge is to calibrate an appropriate level of trust and avoid misuse, disuse or abuse of the recommending system. Compliance (i.e. positive response of the operator on advice from an autonomous agent) can be interpreted as an objective measure of trust as the operator relies on the advice from the autonomous agent. This compliance is also based on the risk perception of the situation as the operator assesses the risk and the benefits of advancing or postponing an operation. A way to calibrate the trust and enhance risk perception is to use the transparency concept. Transparency has been defined as an information during a human-machine interaction that is easy to use with the intent to promote the comprehension, the shared awareness, the intent, the role, the interaction, the performance, the future plans and the reasoning process. This research will focus on two aspects of the transparency concept : the reliability of the autonomous agent ; the outcomes linked to the advice of the autonomous agent. The objective of this research is to understand the effect of the autonomous agent transparency on human trust after an advice from an autonomous agent (here an AI for predictive maintenance) for a more or less risky situation. Our hypothesis is that transparency will impact compliance (H1: Risk transparency will decrease compliance ; H2: Reliability transparency will increase compliance ; H3: Full transparency will decrease compliance)For this experiment we recruited participants to complete decision situations (i.e. accept or deny a proposition, from a predictive maintenance algorithme, of advancing or postponing a CMMS maintenance). A software for predictive maintenance in maritime context was used to address those situations. During this experiment, agent transparency level is manipulated by displaying information related to agent reliability and to situation outcomes, separately or in combination. This agent transparency is mixed with situation complexity (high or low) and the type of advice (advancinc or postponing the maintenance interventions). Age, gender, profession and affinity for the use of technology are assessed for control variables. As the situation represents risk taking, a scale for propensity of risk taking is also used. Trust (subjective and objective), risk perception and mental workload are measured after each situation. As a final question, the participant gives the main information he used to make his choice for each experimental setting.
Loïck Simon, Philippe Rauffet, Clément Guérin, Cédric Seguin
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
How a Few Custom Keycaps Make Keyboards More Ergonomic and Reduce Eye Movement by 35%
Ergonomically designed devices for better workplace design get too little at-tention compared to the annual cost of long-term damage. To help workers better achieve their goals in their work environment, we explore small-step changes that any individual can make with many existing keyboards. We studied the keyboards that users have been using as their daily keyboards for at least a year. In an investigation with baseline and treatment phase we pro-vide the users with 800 keycaps of different shapes, colors and surfaces and let them experiment for 3 months during their daily work. The evaluation shows that users were able to reduce the time for daily operations by 12% and halve the number of looks at the keyboard.
Benny Platte, Marc Ritter, Christian Roschke, Rico Thomanek, Claudia Hösel, Matthias Baumgart
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Responding to the Loneliness in the New Era of the Internet: Exploring the Role of Hugging and Fitting in Alleviating Loneliness
The development of the new era has given the new generation new psychological characteristics of loneliness. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new way to relieve loneliness, and to demonstrate that the interaction method and form of hugging with objects is useful for relieving loneliness.The new design and analysis method is used to verify that the ergonomic design of human fit and inductive hugging interaction function are useful for alleviating loneliness, proving that the emotional needs of users can be addressed by attaching hugging function and ergonomic redesign to specific products, providing a new direction for alleviating the psychological situation of contemporary lonely people and creating better products for alleviating loneliness.In this paper, a literature review is conducted in the early stage to outline the current research on the Internet and loneliness. Based on the starting point of hugging and fitting to relieve loneliness, a human-computer pillow with hugging function is designed. University students who meet the characteristics of the target user group are selected as the experimental research objects, and the questionnaire method is used to collect objective intelligence information by distributing online questionnaires to the research target group, and the interview method is used to conduct in-depth research on the target user group so as to deeply understand the users' psychology and identity. After collecting the relevant data, the data were statistically processed using mathematical tools, analyzed using SPSS and other analytical tools, and considered for its credibility, so as to verify the effect of hugs on alleviating loneliness. The experimental method and interview method were used to ask the test subjects about their feelings, so as to prove that the feeling of closeness has an effect on alleviating loneliness.This paper finds that the interaction action of hugging with objects and the ergonomically based sense of fit are useful for alleviating loneliness and can alleviate people's inner loneliness to a certain extent, which helps to focus on the new trend of loneliness psychology among young people based on the contemporary Internet society, design better loneliness relief products for lonely people and pay attention to the deep needs of users.Keywords: ergonomics, psychology, SPSS, loneliness, Internet, z era, interaction
Song Siying, Xin He
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Elicitation of Diagnosis Strategy During Scanning Chest X-Rays from Eye Tracking Stimulated Retrospections
In the present paper, we apply a debriefing technique aided by eye movement recordings to elicitation of clinical reasoning processes during chest x-rays diagnosis. It can be expected that this technique allows us to obtain elaborated information regarding hidden cognitive processes compared to conventional verbal protocol approach. Two experiments where medical tasks of 20 medical doctors (10 majoring in radiology/ respiratology and 10 majoring in surgery/acute medicine) on diagnosis of chest x-rays images were recorded with a video camera and an eye tracking system were performed. In the first experiment, each one of 5 chest x-rays having four patterns of cancer, pneumonia, normal and others were shown. A participant was asked to make his/her diagnosis decisions about whether each of chest x-rays. Immediately afterwards, a debriefing where each eye tracking recording was used as a cue to verbalize the participant’s implicit diagnosis processes was conducted. In the second experiment, a comparative diagnosis on the current patient’s status was carried out. Five pairs of x-rays images were shown to each participant. In each pair, one was a current image and the other one was an image taken a year ago. The participant examined the current patient’s status by identifying small changes with time. The debriefing stimulated by eye movement recordings was performed just after the task. Based on the verbal protocols form the debriefing session, each participant’s reasoning processes were traced. The results indicated that there were mainly four effective reasoning strategies as followings: Postponement of lung field interpretation, avoidance of preconception by applying redundant scanning rule, critical area revisited, and complying with one’s mental check-list at any moment. At the same time, one problematic strategy was also identified that can be named as “single lesion focusing strategy.” Based on all results as well as implications obtained, we discuss insights relating to effective medical reasoning processes as well as validity of verbal protocols/comments on eye mark recordings.
Hirotaka Aoki, Koji Morishita, Marie Takahashi, Rea Machida, Kousuke Hirata, Atsushi Kudoh, Tsuyoshi Shirai
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Technological Innovations for the treatment of impulsiveness
Impulse control, or also called inhibitory control, refers to the capacity of controlling attentiveness, behavior, thoughts, and/or emotions, and, at the end, to control internal willingness that is in charge of our behavior. It is important to mention that impulsiveness can be associated to three main factors, first, to behave without a direct implication of frontal lobe functioning; second, increased rate of the response given; and, behavior directed towards immediate reward. This article arises from the need to include technological innovations for the treatment of impulsiveness, thus, literature revision of the available applications about this topic has been made.
María López, Mónica Acosta-Rodas, Mónica Bolaños-Pasquel, Carlos Ramos-Galarza
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Optimization of the Emergency Evacuation Sign's Color Cognition for Users with Color Vision Deficiency
Color has the characteristics of fast reading and fast recognition, with this reason, information in environments needs color to help fast communication, especially in the situation of emergency evacuation. The colour and graphic symbols on emergency evacuation signs(EES) help direct people to safety and provide emergency information quickly.(Barry Gray. 2012)But according to statistics, about 8% of the world population are suffered by color vision deficiency（CVD）. While they are not resolved all colors, just easy to confuse some color. Today, different countries or organizations have different standard for EES, and many research shows, the color recognition of EES still has the phenomenon of uneven benefits of different groups of people, which means there are significant differences in the color recognition efficiency of EES between CVD and normal vision groups, especially deuteranomalous vision group (G, Landini, G. Perryer.2009).While the appropriate color selection can substantially improve CVD groups’ color recognition and at the same time not affecting the normal users’ color recognition rate. Therefore, to explore appropriate EES color design optimization for the CVD population has the social and scientific significance.With this background, this research intends to study the EES color recognition of CVD people and try to build optimize EES color model for this group of users. The research start with different selections of EES color standard among countries and organizations. Through the comparison of these standard colors, some color samples are sorted out with the help of the recognition models of CVD people. Then totally 57 CVD people participated the research as experimental volunteers to test the recognition of selected samples. The final ranking of samples were influenced by both the color hue and also the color lightness contrast between EES background and the icon or text. The objective of the research is to build a more inclusive practical color model for improving EES and other safety sign design. The result of this research could assist color design optimization and help the EES design to select appropriate color, without affecting the recognition rate of normal color vision people, while greatly improving the recognition of CVD group. The research conforms to the design thinking of universal design, inclusive design and human-centred design. The results could be used to optimize or review EES and other signage color design, could also apply to other visual information communication field.
Duan Wu, Peng Gao, Ying Zhang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
The Relationship Between Simplified Chinese Character Height and Cognition Research in Signage Design
75% of our external information comes from vision, in signage and wayfinding system, characters and graphics have become the most important factor of information cognition. As the main characters in China's signage and wayfinding system, simplified Chinese characters affect the rapid and accurate cognition of information. At present, most of the cognitive research on simplified Chinese characters are learned from the data of Japan and Taiwan. Compared with Latin alphabets, Japanese and Chinese characters are much similar, but there are still significant differences between them. Japanese is a combination of Chinese characters and Kanas, the fonts and the layout of characters are very different. The traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan are much more complicated than the simplified ones used in mainland China. In order to obtain the data that can really guide the standards of signage design in China, this research carried out a series of experimental studies on simplified Chinese characters’ recognition. Under the condition of fixed font, font weight, color, similar stroke number and character frequency range, the experiment obtained the data of characters’ height and recognition distance by changing characters’ height and recording the corresponding visual recognition reaction time. Then, based on the method of regression analysis, the relationship between the two variables of character height and recognition distance is calculated and visualized. Through indoor simulation and supplementary experiments, the data and conclusions could guide or verify the existing ergonomics data and signage design standard. The research outcome shows the relationship between simplified Chinese character height and cognition distance of on public signage system, which provides a theoretical basis for the related research and design. The results also revealed that with the use of Sans Serif typeface，the minimum of character height in the current design standard can be further increased. This research is still in early stage, in addition to the character height, the influence of stroke number, thickness and background colour contrast of characters still need to be further studied.
Duan Wu, Peng Gao, Dongying Hu, Ran Xu, Yue Qi, Yumeng Zhang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Towards An Ergonomic Interface In Ship Bridges: Identification of The Design Criteria
Despite the current effort on ship design associated with hull structure, navigational and propulsion, equipment design inadequacy still causes approximately one-third of all maritime accidents [1]. Human-centred design (HCD) can minimise human errors through maritime service design [2]. The core of HCD is to enhance the usability of products/systems and maximise user’s satisfaction. The Human-centred maritime design (HCMD) applies the HCD method in ship bridge design, and enhances OOW performance in vessel operation. Service design is categorised as a sub-category of industrial design [3], a specification and construction process to deliver valuable capacities for actions of a particular user [4]. Contemporary industrial designers increasingly produce concepts/solutions for services rather than physical products [5], which is expected to work across disciplines and understand users, technologies, and business [3]. Taking account of the five vital parts of service design: actors (seafarers), locations (ship bridge), props (interfaces), associates (vessel manufacturers), and processes (operation workflows) [6] in the maritime service industry, a new HCMD will help designers to identify problems, iterate design concepts, and address all dimensions of user’s issues. VR and 3D Game Engine technologies provide an alternative approach for designers to present their design concepts. They enable prototyping and testing (data collection) works to be undertaken easily and with low cost; this was especially significant when the practice of NPD (new product development) took place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) has been adopted in current ship design [2]. The application of physical ergonomics has benefitted the modernisation of ship design to improve seafarers’ workplace conditions. Cognitive ergonomics particularly helps in the user interface design (UI) to reduce seafarers’ cognitive workload. Organisational ergonomics, however, will affect the workflow structure of vessel operations to relieve the pressure on seafarers during the decision-making process [2]. A recently funded project has been undertaken by a multidisciplinary team, seeking a design solution to improve seafarers’ performance reliability at sea. The principles/criteria of maritime service design were developed based on the study of a) human/operator needs; b) the state-of-the-art technologies to improve the seafarer’s work environment; and c) the user experience (UX) in vessel operation. A combination of engineering and design research methods were employed: a systematic review to clarify/address the above research questions; and the field study to investigate current/future requirements of ship bridge design; to map the behavioural human-machine interaction (HMI) and further to develop the design criteria/drivers for the ideation of an ergonomic interface. The NASA-TLX (task load index) assessment method will be used in the validation phase (future work) to assess if the design solution reduced participants’ cognitive workload and enhanced their vessel operation performance. This paper explores the project conducted so far and offers initial findings.
Fang Bin Guo, Bingyu Wu, Matthew Wah, Zaili Yang, Eddie Blanco-Davis, Abdul Khalique, Alan Bury
Open Access
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Conference Proceedings
Bricoleurs: Resilience in Improvised Work in a Publishing House
This study analyzes one of the issues that organizational psychology has dealt with in the last decade in a more exhaustive way: resilience is the result of having an optimistic nature as long as optimism does not distort the sense of reality. From a phenomenological perspective, publishing house Queyám was analyzed from the strategic part of the company, in this case a married couple that is in the presidency, as a sample the 6 employees were chosen in their different areas applying the focus group technique where the wife served Moderator of the structured interview with open questions of in vivo coding analyzing literal phrases that express the words used by the employees. It is discussed with the Nobel Prize in Physics Richard Feynman who became an expert in opening safes without knowing the combination, not only trying to find the mechanisms that allowed him to do so, but also collecting the psychological impressions of the people who used those safes or to find out how they chose the opening codes, finally this company has built resilience using improvisation as a fundamental capability
Cesar Guevara, Raquel Lara Guevara, Diego Mauricio Bonilla Jurado
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Experiencing the History and Cultural Heritage: The Tourist Centred Map Design of Liverpool City
The tourist maps are geographic maps designed for tourists that indicate the narrow course of tour itineraries such as foot routes, automobile or railroad travel routes, or some combination of these. Specialised maps serve as advertisements for tourism and as a means to publicise vacation spots, sightseeing landmarks, and tourist attractions. A good specialised tour map may combine both the functions of guiding tourism and broadening tourists' horizons of regional culture and historical attractions. A usable product can assist people in decision-making process, thus, taking account of users’ requirements to create an ‘Simple Interface’ is the strategy of this map design. This paper introduces the concept of a thematic tour map design that bases on the regeneration of Liverpool Albert Dock, to reveal the scenic spots in the regenerated post-industrial zone of the city. As one of the cultural products developed in the urban regeneration project, this knowledge-oriented map design takes account of human-centred design (HCD) approach, aimed to enhance the user's interactive experience, and add commemorative value to the product. Following the theory of three levels of design: function, form, and user experience (UX). The design focuses not only on: (1) the function of the map, such as illustrating geographic/transportation information and rendering regional cultural/industrial heritage attractions, but also (2) the aesthetic styling of the product to satisfy the commemorative/collection demand of tourists; and in particular, the design emphases (3) to improve the UX through creating an ergonomic user interface (UI). Applying product semantic/semiotics principle, this tourist-centred map design has proposed to create a simple interface of the map, and with the aesthetic form of graphic presentation, thereby, to provide the users an intuitive interaction with the map that enhances the users’ experience. In this map design, the tourist information of the city was highlighted to focus on regional culture and industrial heritage presentation. The contents were categorised into geographic information and knowledge sections. The map consists of Liverpool Attractions, City Centre Map, Mersey Rail Map and Albert Dock History. Having applied the foldable concept and 3D aerial style in the map design, the product helps the users to easily carry and use. In addition, the iconic post-industrial architectures of the dock and the colour of Liverpool urban landscapes were extracted, abstracted, and applied to the map design, aimed to add commemorative value and to reflect Liverpool’s distinctive scenic spots. Having targeted both to satisfy the functional requirements of the users and to introduce necessary/relevant knowledge of the city, this knowledge-oriented thematic map design offers accurate and humanised service, so as to improve the user’s experience in travelling. This paper expects to provide designers or researchers with an example of future map design, through employing the HCD approach to create a knowledge-oriented map with an improved user experience.
Xiaochun Zhan, Fang Bin Guo
Open Access
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Conference Proceedings