User productivity as a function of AutoCAD interface design

Increased operator productivity is a desired outcome of user-CAD interaction scenarios. Two objectives of this research were to (1) define a measure of operator productivity and (2) empirically investigate the potential effects of CAD interface design on operator productivity, where productivity is defined as the percentage of a drawing session correctly completed per unit time. Here, AutoCAD provides the CAD environment of interest. Productivity with respect to two AutoCAD interface designs ( menu, template) and three task types ( draw, dimension, display) was investigated. Analysis of user productivity data revealed significantly higher productivity under the menu interface condition than under the template interface condition. A significant effect of task type was also discovered, where user productivity under display tasks was higher than productivity under the draw and dimension tasks. Implications of these results are presented.