Publication

The air traffic control（ ATC） tasks are widely known as multiple and complicated tasks with high cognitive demand. For improving task performances while reducing controller’s workloads, this research aims to develop screen design policy of ATC consoles based on the experimental analyses of the effects of color salience on task performances, situation awareness（ SA） and workloads of participants. We carried out an experiment with six skilled air traffic controllers as participants focusing on color salience which is one of the user interface elements that has a significant impact on visual attention in ATC. The experimental task consisted of multiple tasks, which are the issue of necessary instructions to aircraft as the main task, and hand-in and hand-off operations from/to neighboring ATC sectors as the sub task. Experimental conditions provided three patterns of screen designs with（ a） no,（ b） small, and（ c） large gap of color salience between aircraft needing the swift issue of ATC instructions and the others. The result suggested that the performances of the main task and the cognitive workload were relatively improved in the small salience gap condition.