Display panel design of a general utility helicopter by applying quantitative and qualitative approaches

Abstract

AbstractThe flight deck is the ultimate human–machine interface application. It uses human senses of touch and sight in a safety‐critical situation. Display systems, present on a flight deck, are complex environments causing excessive mental workload, and the consequences of errors can be catastrophic. To prevent any human error, a user‐friendly display panel must be designed. In this research the best natural dialog between the crew and interface is considered while reflecting user perspective to design by applying quantitative and qualitative approaches; in this way, proper positions of analogue indicators on the front of the display panel are determined. Multi‐Criteria Decision Making algorithms are employed as a quantitative approach. To test whether the decision‐making preferences are consistent with a quasi‐concave, a quasi‐convex, and a linear utility function, a combined algorithm is applied. Due to the form of utility function, an algorithm finding the most preferred alternative of decision making is used. The aim of this approach is to find an order in which to locate each indicator to suitable classes. Card‐Sorting methodology is used for the qualitative research of the same problem. Results of two different approaches are compared. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.