A direct touch table-top display as a multi-user information kiosk: Comparing the usability of a single display groupware either by a single user or people cooperating as a group

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the usability of a direct touch table-top display (D3TD) application that was designed to be used as a multi-user information kiosk (MUIK). We examined its use by either a single person or multiple user groups to determine the effect of people cooperating as a group on its usability. We compared both groups' user performance and usability survey results. A one-way MANOVA of overall usability metrics emphasised a significant difference between the groups. Given the significance of the overall test, examining the univariate main effects revealed that the difference between the groups arose in the earlier system use stages due to differences in the success rate. There was no difference in the task completion time between the groups. Participants in the multiple user group achieved a higher task completion rate in the first phase and lower error rates in the following steps. However, the usability survey results did not reveal a significant difference between the groups. We observed that users working on the same individual task tended to help each other when working in a multi-user environment. These mutual aids occurred mostly in the earlier stages, influencing the users' performance. The results show that a D3TD has a potential to enhance usability in terms of effectiveness when deployed as a MUIK. © 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. All rights reserved. © 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.