New, sophisticated computerized workstations available for design tasks often represent large financial investments. Unfortunately, few guarantees on useability are offered in return. Our research is intended to quantify useability gains and losses on CAD workstations that are due to differences in the workstation configurations available to the design industry.

Specifically, we have presented a systematic analysis of the known effects of speech input, color cuing, and the use of multiple CRTs as well as proposing a methodology for evaluating the effects of these configurations on the mental workload of designers in the CAD environment.

The results of our research and analyses provide important information to those in the applied community that must continually evaluate the merits of more expensive hardware versus designer complaints of mental fatigue due to less than optimal equipment. In addition, our analysis provides a potential quantitative parameter for describing the user in a complete systems theory of the CAD process.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £78 +P&P)