The Design and Evaluation of Complex Systems: Application to a Man-Machine Interface for Aerial Navigation

Abstract

Systematic and economic design and evaluation strategies were applied to a computer-generated 4-D aerial navigation system. During the evaluation each of 24 experienced instrument pilots received training in a PLATO-based digital flight simulator using either a keyboard entry/static map, keyboard entry/dynamic map, or touch entry/dynamic map system. Tasks performed during the execution of an area navigation course included continuous flight control, navigation data updating, digital data entry, and amended course plotting. Digital data entry training time was comparable for all three systems but the touch-map proved superior for the plotting tasks, greatly reducing training and task execution times while virtually eliminating errors. Subsequent performance evaluation showed that the touch-map reduced flight path tracking error, increased processing rates on a digit-cancelling secondary task, and increased the accuracy of manual plotting operations. It was concluded that a touch entry system could significantly reduce cockpit workload across a wide range of operational environments.