Relative advantage of portable computer-based workcards for aircraft inspection

Following a successful demonstration of the applicability of human factors guidelines to the design of aircraft maintenance documentation a natural extension was to replace paper-based workcards with a computer system. Using additional human factors guidelines for design of computer systems, a prototype hypertext system was developed for use on a portable computer. A number of different workcards were accommodated, and an evaluation made of the computer-based workcard against both original and improved paper-based workcards. For the task studied, eight inspectors rated the computer-based system highly on scales derived from the guidelines. The computer-based system was a significant improvement over the original paper-based workcards.