Joystick for Marine Maneuvering

Abstract

A big part of our modern lives evolves around interpreting feedback sent to us from different devices. Is your phone vibrating and the screen flashing? Odds are someone is trying to call you. Is the light on your stove turned on? Odds are it is activated and hot. To minimize the risk of misunderstandings and accidents, this feedback needs to be clear and self-evident. One way to ensure this, is to develop a product based on user experience. This ensures that the user understands the product, and use it in the way the developer intended. This project aimed to develop a joystick test bench that could test different kinds of feedback and activation methods. The test bench consisted of both a physical joystick prototype which the user could interact with, as well as a simulator which the physical prototype could be tested on. User studies were performed on the prototype. The results from the user studies point towards that users would like more feedback on function activation than just visual. The test bench itself can be further developed and used in future studies.