ABSTRACT
About the chapter Direct measurement of human performance, such as used in Chapter 5, is often the most accurate way of obtaining quantitative information, but may be infeasible or prohibitively expensive in some situations. This chapter describes several other approaches that can be used to predict human performance at various tasks. Synthetic data systems are databases of predetermined times for particular motions, which can be aggregated into an overall prediction of how long a particular task can take an operator to perform. Various methods have been employed for this purpose, and this chapter covers several of them that differ in significant ways. Regression models can be used in conjunction with, or instead of, these methods in certain circumstances. Advances in computing technology have led to the development of very powerful computer models of humans that can be used to visualize and predict human performance. All these methods, however, are influenced by a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. This is particularly noticeable in a subset of tasks, namely, moving and reaching tasks, which have been found to be well-predicted by the information content of the task.
