ABSTRACT
Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
j.buetzler@iaw.rwth-aachen.de
As large scale touchscreens are used more frequently in different application areas, the ergonomic design of software applications for large touchscreens has to be considered. Large scale touchscreens are beneficial concerning the representation of complex information by reducing scrolling activities, but working with them also goes along with higher muscular strain than working on classical computer workstations. In this empirical study, we investigated the muscular activity for the eight most severely stressed muscles. Therefore an experimental setup with ten right-handed subjects aged between 21 and 32 years was used. A pointing task was chosen, since this is a characteristic task for touch input. In order to detect areas that are correlated with higher and lower muscular strain 14 target positions on the touchscreen were investigated. The results show significant effects of the target position on muscular activity. Thus, the ergonomic arrangement of buttons regarding muscular strain can be beneficial for the user. On the basis of our results we give practical recommendations for the ergonomic arrangement of interaction elements on large scale touchscreens.
