The Influence of Vibration on Visual Perception and Tap Interaction of Human-Machine Interfaces

Vibration, as one of the most prevalent environmental factors in human-machine interfaces, has been shown to adversely affect interaction efficiency and human behavior. How to alleviate the negative impact of vibration environment by design deserve to explore. We employed an icon visual search task and an interactive tap task to investigate the effects of graphical user interface, including icon border shape, line width, and complexity on users’ visual perception and touch interaction performance under different levels of vibration intensity. Results indicated that vibration intensity significantly impaired accuracy in both tasks and increased response time in the tap task, but not in visual search. Borderless icons significantly outperformed those with borders, and simpler icons showed better performance than complex ones. However, icon line width had no significant effect. These findings offer valuable guidance for designing graphical user interfaces in vibration-prone environments.