Lecture 3: Displays and Situation Awareness

Question 1

What are the roles of displays?

Answer 1

To give a signal about a system and make the operator act upon it

Question 2

What are the three types of displays?

Answer 2

visual, auditory, and tactile

Question 3

What are the three types of visual displays?

Answer 3

HUD, HDD, Head mounted display

Question 4

What are the characteristics of visual displays?

Answer 4

high rate and large amounts of info transfer; requires info to be presented in operators FOV and gaze direction; visual channel is often overloaded

Question 5

What are the characteristics of auditory displays?

Answer 5

can quickly capture a person’s attention; omnidirectional; difficulty in localizing, potential to cause pain

Question 6

What are the characteristics of tactile displays?

Answer 6

ability to create private display; can be applied to parts of the body; conveys less amount and complexity of information

Question 7

What is salience compatibility?

Answer 7

important and urgent information should attract attention; highly salient indicators should be used for highly important information

Question 8

What is exploit redundancy gain?

Answer 8

Use redundancy gain to avoid confusion by presenting the same information through different channels

Question 9

What is the multiple resource theory?

Answer 9

humans can process information concurrently in multiple sensory channels; each channel is relatively independent; each channel has limited capacity and overloading may result in poor task performance

Question 10

What are multimodal displays?

Answer 10

integration of visual, auditory, and or tactile sensory channels to display information; presenting same information at the same time; compensates for deficits in any one modality; allows higher accuracy and faster RTWha

Question 11

How should displays be designed and what should be avoided?

Answer 11

design consistently; avoid absolute judgment limits (don’t force operator to judge level of variable

Question 12

What are some coding methods for visual displays?

Answer 12

flashlight; abstract sign, text, icon

Question 13

What are some coding methods for auditory displays?

Answer 13

tonal sound, auditory icon, earcon, and speech

Question 14

Auditory icons v. earcons

Answer 14

auditory icons are recorded everyday sounds that are used for the purpose they represent; earcons are synthesized sounds that have no relation tot he event

Question 15

What are some coding methods for tactile displays?

Answer 15

abstract tactile pattern; tacton; and spatio-temporal pattern

Question 16

What are spatio-temporal patterns?

Answer 16

sequential activation of a series of vibrotactors and require more than one vibrotactor

Question 17

What are tactons?

Answer 17

a single vibrotactor manipulated by turning on and off

Question 18

What is Endsley’s definition of Situation Awareness?

Answer 18

The perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future

Question 19

What is level 1 SA?

Answer 19

perception of the elements in the environment; key elements that define the situation

Question 20

What is level 2 SA?

Answer 20

comprehension of the current situation; defining the current status in support of rapid decision making and action

Question 21

What is level 3 SA?

Answer 21

projection of future status; short-term planning and option evaluation when time permits

Question 22

What factors can affect the loss of SA?

Answer 22

overloaded attention, inability to recognize patterns, too many tasks, inadequate understanding of system or state (bad mental model), failure to chunk information (bad working memory)

Question 23

What is SAGAT?

Answer 23

Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique: objectively and directly measuring SA during a team simulation using “freezes” at predetermined points in time with participants reporting on “what is going on” from their perspective on the situation

Question 24

What is SPAM?

Answer 24

Situation Present Assessment Method: ability to locate information in the environment as an indication of SA, doesn’t require pausing of the test

Question 25

What are the principles for improving SA?

Answer 25

create displays that help people notice changes; make the situation easy to understand; keep the operator in the loop; help people project the state of the system; organize information around goals; display to broaden attention, train for situation awareness

Question 26

What are the design principles for alerts and warnings?

Answer 26

Salience compatibility: make important and urgent info salient
Exploit redundancy gain: use redundancy
Be consistent
Avoid absolute judgment limits: don’t force operators to judge level of warning