Control-Display Association Preferences for Concentric Controls

Abstract

Seventy-five male college students and twenty-five human engineering psychologists were given a questionnaire presenting diagrams consisting of three concentrically ganged knobs and three dials which they were told the knobs operate. They were asked which dial they thought should be operated by each of the three knobs. Knob-dial associations were obtained with dials in horizontal and vertical arrays above, below, to the left of, and to the right of the knobs, and with dials differing in size, shape and distance from the knob axis. Knob-dial associations were found to be influenced by all of these factors except dial shape. Associations which were both strong and relatively unrivaled were found for dial position in a horizontal array (except when the array is to the left of the knobs), and for dial size. Subjects associated the spatial knob progression, front knob to back knob with the spatial dial progression, left dial to right dial and with the dial size progression, smallest dial to largest dial. Strong, but strongly rivaled, associations were found for dial position in a vertical array and for dial distance from the knob axis.