The Impact of Multi-Layered Data-Blocks on Controller Performance

This article reports on a laboratory experiment that looks at complexity in air traffic and information. The authors hope to better understand the important relationships between the controller's cognitive processing and the environment. With the push to increase the capacity of the National Airspace System, air traffic control displays are showing increasing amounts of information, not only the number of aircraft, but also airspeed, altitude and other associated data. Often they are superimposed on a map, leading to cluttered displays. An experiment was conducted to better understand the degree to which this phenomenon could interfere with controllers' ability to register the information and act on it appropriately. Specifically, the experiment tested the effectiveness of data-block design and the effect on controller performance of increasing data-block lines. Embedded versus layered data-blocks were one major area of comparison for one element of the study. Four data-block designs were tested. Task loads were varied, as were priority settings for the data-blocks. The task used for testing these effects was an aircraft vectoring task. The experiment showed that data-blocks should not reduce reaction so that there is not enough to create situational awareness.