Design and usability evaluation of a novice user-oriented control panel for lighting and air conditioning

The objective of this paper is to design a control panel for novice users based upon new concepts for lighting and air conditioning. First we investigated the contents of tasks and the terms used in commercial sheets and control panels of lighting and air conditioning. Second we made up design concepts of new panels for novice users, and designed four panels separately by iterative design method and one panel by the parallel design method. Usability tests carried out those five control panels. Thirteen subjects were instructed to do four tasks in the experiment. Parameters for assessing usability were operating time, error rates, the number of times referring to the users' manual and subjective ratings. The results showed that the panel designed by parallel design method was superior to the other panels in operating time, error rate and the number of referring to operating manuals.