Modern production systems have become highly complex, given technological progress and competitive market needs. However, the role of human operators keeps being fundamental since they are in charge of supervising machines and take proper action in the presence of alarms and faults. As a consequence, the design of effective and easy to use human-machine interfaces (HMIs) is a key component of overall production efficiency.
In this paper we provide an extensive overview of different methods to assess the usability of HMIs for industrial operators. In particular, the methods covered by the survey range from subjective assessment to objective quantitative analysis that takes into account user’s mental fatigue, user’s interaction strategies and production efficiency.
