A Tool for Easing the Cognitive Analysis of Design Prototypes of Aircraft Cockpit Instruments: The Human Efficiency Evaluator

Abstract

Development and evaluation of dynamic and complex systems require new techniques and tools to evaluate the risks of Human and Systems Error, especially for safety critical systems. Established techniques like the cognitive workload analysis that can be used to assess the individual perceived operator workload for sets of tasks these are not widely used in industrial development. That is, because cognitive analysis of dynamic systems depends on complex architectures and simulations to evaluate workload over time, and is still driven by proprietary notations for cognitive models that require in-depth cognitive modeling skills and is currently only accessible to experts. In this paper we present an extension to CogTool, the Human Efficiency Evaluator (HEE) to ease the analysis of the impact of new instruments and new display designs with respect to human operator workload and task execution times. The tool is designed to make these cognitive analysis techniques available to non-experts, such as system analysts and engineers. We explain the cognitive modeling and analysis process supported by the HEE referring to an aeronautics scenario presented earlier by Hutchins. The cognitive analysis compares the task performance and workload of three generations of cockpit instrument designs to support pilots' with the slats/flaps settings during an aircraft approach with the current support in modern aircrafts and was performed by using the HEE.