VibrAid: comparing temporal and spatial tactile cues in control room environments

Abstract

We present VibrAid, a miniaturized wrist-worn haptic display that provides vibrotactile alert cues for operators of large dashboard environments. We interviewed three control room operators in a steam plant on what a vibrotactile attention guidance system for the control room should look like and designed our system and the laboratory evaluation environment accordingly. We conducted an experiment (24 participants) comparing task completion time with temporal and spatial attention cues to the standard visual attention cues that are used in most modern monitoring systems. While temporal attention cues did not have an effect on task completion time, spatial cues led to an significant decrease in average task completion time, as well as significantly increasing trust in the ability to keep up with tasks even at a more rushed pace.