Evaluation of industrial touch interfaces using a modular software architecture

In the highly automated industry process surveillance is crucial for understanding current states and decisions of certain parts of the industrial line. Specific parts of the industrial line, however, may have their own user interfaces right beside of the machine. Thus obtaining a holistic impression of the state of the industrial line might be complicated. So on the one hand, important functionalities should be summarized into one user interface. On the other hand, the user interface must be mobile and easily accessible to have the information on site of the inspected part of the machine. In this work, we propose three different navigation concepts for touch interfaces and evaluate them on a thinkable story board based on tasks of an industrial plant. These concepts can be compared this way, as the single functional components of the interfaces are the same. All three concepts are evaluated on two different mobile devices with a 7" and a 12" screen. We show that the objective metrics of all concepts are invariant to the screen size. The subjective results in regard to the screen size, however, differ for the most flexible user interface (UI). We determine the best concept based on users' preferences and the obtained objective metrics.