Effects of display position on guided repair and maintenance assisted by head-mounted display (HMD)

Abstract

Over the last few years, there have been striking developments in wearable computing. Among all the different forms of wearable devices, Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) are deemed the first seamless solution to enabling workers with real time contextual information and allowing companies to integrate with existing back-end systems. The hands-free feature that come along with the HMDs is also believed a great advantage over many traditional technologies. However, few studies had discussed the impact of different design characteristics of head mounted displays on task performance. This study aimed to find out how different display positions of Head Mounted Displays may affect the performance of workers performing guided repair and maintenance tasks. A set of car maintenance tasks were performed by 20 participants with task guidance presented at four Display Conditions: above-eye HMD, eye-centered HMD, below-eye HMD and the traditional paper manual. Time and errors were measured and discussed, as well as other user experience related measurements.