Ecological interface design

Ecological interface design: Sensor failures in air traffic control decision-making

Bijsterbosch, V.A.

Borst, C. (mentor)
Mulder, M. (mentor)
Van Paassen, M.M. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Control & Operations

ATM & Airports and Safety

2015-07-03

Ecological Interface Design (EID) is an interface design framework widely used in process control work domains, and more recently also for aviation purposes. An example is the Solution Space Diagram (SSD), a decision-support tool for air traffic controllers designed according to the EID principles. However, there have been some concerns about the performance robustness of ecological interfaces when subjected to incorrect sensor information. This paper presents research that was performed to investigate the effects of explicitly visualizing the means-ends relationships on sensor failure detection performance. The set-up and findings of a human-in-the-loop experiment with sixteen subjects controlling aircraft in a predefined airspace show promising results. An analysis of the experimental data indicate that the ecological interface with explicit representation of the means-ends relations enables improved failure detection performance. Advisory response times turned out to be longer, indicating the usage of this extra functionality in order to check the advisories. Specifically in high complexity scenarios subjected to sensor failure, this extra feature has a positive impact on performance.

EID

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c3256357-ee14-493d-a661-b5ed27a4165e

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Bijsterbosch, V.A.