Determining the validity of the visual field principle for designing control/display arrangements

The Visual Field (VF) principle has been found to apply in many situations, but has not been tested under many possible conditions of operator posture with different display and control locations. In this research we used four display locations, four control locations relative to a seated operator and tested the strength of population stereotype for six different types of controls with linear displays moving either horizontally or vertically and circular displays with a neutral indicator at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions. Apart from several minor differences in operator responses, the VF principle held up well under all these different display/control relationships. By designing the display/control arrangement to have high stereotype strength, the direction of control movement for a given direction of indicator movement can be selected to comply with the VF principle for producing fewest errors in movement direction.