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FAST: Final Approach Spacing Tool for Air Traffic Control

This case study explores the development and evaluation of FAST, an automated tool designed to help air traffic controllers calculate spacing between aircraft during their final approach. The study focuses on user-centered iterative design and the use of prototyping for UI testing.

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FAST: Final Approach Spacing Tool for Air Traffic Control

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Chapter 19 Case Study on requirements, design, and evaluation: NATS

  2. Introduction • FAST: Final Approach Spacing Tool • An air traffic control system • Developed for UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) • Controller’s tasks: • analyze data from radar screen • communicate to pilot

  3. FAST • Designed to automate calculation of approach timings • User-centered iterative design • iterating between design and evaluation • Key concern: spacing between aircraft • FAST was developed to help calculate this spacing and advise controllers when aircraft should turn to final

  4. Example radar display Not the real radar display--just something I found on the web

  5. Final approach control • Radar display shows aircraft that should be flying in their flight corridors, according to their flight plans • Flights get passed between controllers • Physical strips are used to pass along flight info---these are color-coded indicating size • Size determines spaces: can’t have a small aircraft fly into the wake vortex of a larger one

  6. FAST UI • Improved radar display: • runway lines added • landing sequence boxes • star and diamonds representing aircraft • small white number indicating seconds to imminent turn to final (the FAST output) • Touch panel: • input to FAST (e.g., wind, visibility, minimum spacing required)

  7. Points to ponder • If users enter minium spacing required into FAST, what does FAST calculate? • How else could this be accomplished? • how about a dB of aircraft--there are only so many makes and models? • one could hardcode the minimum separation distances and simply look them up • alternatively, calculate based on aircraft dimensions and weight…

  8. FAST Development • Project team: 5 core members, interdisciplinary (CS + HF + user): • usability practitioner • software developer • algorithm developer (eh? what’s the diff?) • requirements engineer (what’s that?) • manager

  9. Requirements Gathering • Users: • 23-50 years old; well paid and motivated • Tasks (briefly): • analyze data from radar screen • communicate to pilot • Environment: • well-lit, noisy, could be stressful • Requirements gathering: • observations • questionnaires

  10. UI Design • Prototypes used: • low-fidelity (paper) initially • mid-fielity (powerpoint with animation) • high-fidelity (C++ simulator basically) • Note the investment here: writing a simulator to test the GUI • may seem prohibitively expensive • however, some algorithms were re-used (e.g., separation calculations presumably)

  11. Planning the Evaluation • Start with a plan (e.g., experimental design “recipe”: subjects, i.v.’s, d.v.’s, procedures, etc.) • Select users (representative sample) • Simulate environment (or test in vivo?) • Plan the scenarios, be ready for users • Collect data

  12. Evaluate • Collect data on SEE (Satisfaction, Efficiency, Effectiveness), if possible • FAST: looks like mainly concerned with satisfaction, i.e., subjective data, self-assessment • Analyze data (here, mainly questionnaires) • Apply results to re-design and iterate • Report results (to customers, or write a SIGCHI paper :)

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