Principles of Design for Complex Displays: A Comparative Evaluation

The present study examined the main and interactive effects of information format, information density, principle of information grouping, orientation of the airspeed scale, and task type on response time (RT) and accuracy in a decision making task. Forty-eight college students viewed static displays of primary flight instruments and signaled responses to the displays by pressing keys on the computer keyboard. Three levels of task type were employed. In the current state estimation task, subjects were required to determine whether each individual instrument reading was within prespecified limits. In the future state estimation task, subjects were required to attend to the relationship between instrument readings, and to estimate the implication of these relationships for future flight conditions. In the combined task condition, subjects completed both the current and the future state estimation tasks during each experimental trial. All subjects were exposed to three levels of information format (analogue, digital, or combined analogue and digital displays), and to three levels of information density (low, medium, or high)