ABSTRACT
Operator situation awareness plays a major role in the design and evaluation of human-machine systems. Whereas many studies address the question ‘how aware is the operator of a situation?’, only a few focus on investigating what operators should be aware of in the first place. That is, what are situations? In this chapter, we touch upon some of our research projects that aim to answer the latter question, following an ‘ecological’ approach to interface design. As an example, we discuss the conflict detection and resolution task in air traffic control and show how ecological interfaces support air traffic controllers in their work. A novel decision-support tool will be presented, driven by automated algorithms that present ‘solution spaces’ to the human operator. All feasible control actions are shown, visualising the operatorʼs means (controls) and ends (goals) such that she understands their relationships, can vary strategies and tactics, and remains in complete control. Using Sheridanʼs early taxonomy of automation levels, we show how solution-space-based decision-support tools can facilitate smooth transitions across various levels of automation.
