Making the most of ecological interface design: the role of individual differences

As advanced control rooms for new process control plants are being designed , the question arises as to whether operators of the future need to have a particular set of cognitive characteristics to make the most of those advan ced control rooms. This issue was investigated by examining the interaction between ecological interface design (EID) and individual differences in th e context of a process control microworld. A number of potential predictors of performance were investigated, including: demographic data, type of int erface, type of instruction, and data from two cognitive style tests. Eight linear regression analyses were conducted to determine which variables wer e the strongest predictors of performance. The results indicate that the st rongest and most consistent predictor of performance was the interaction be tween a holist cognitive style score and an interface based on the principl es of EID. That is, individuals who used an EID interface and who had high holist scores were the best performers. It seems that these individuals hav e the relational thinking ability that is required to exploit the value of the higher-order functional information provided by an EID interface. This empirical result has practical implications for operator selection. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.