December 9, 2004 - Eurocontrol...December 9, 2004 Christophe Mertz IntuiLab, [email protected] Stéphane ChattyIntuiLab, [email protected] Yves Rinato Intactile Design, [email protected]

CARE-INO ANIMS:Animation and Sound in

ATC Human Machine Interfaces

December 9, 2004

Christophe Mertz IntuiLab, [email protected]éphane Chatty IntuiLab, [email protected] Rinato Intactile Design, [email protected]

2 CARE-INO Workshop 9th Dec 2004

Outline• The ANIMS project: why, who, what• State of the art on animations and sound in HMI• Assessment through demonstrators:

– Selection of ATC scenarios– A design methodology– Proposed designs

• Lessons learnt


ANIMS: why?

“Improving the efficiency and safety of ATM user interfaces with visual

animations and sound”

More efficient interfaces through better– communication from machine to user– communication between users


ANIMS: who?• Eurocontrol

– Project steering– ATC & HMI experts

• IntuiLab– HMI centre of expertise (R&D) – ATC background

• Intactile Design– graphical and sound designers for HMIs

• Domain experts– ATC experts (Eurocontrol, CENA)– HMI & sound experts (IRCAM, Renault, Apple)


ANIMS: what?

• State of the art on animation and sound in HMI • Analysis of potential benefits in ATC HMIs• Selection of representative ATC scenarios • Demonstrator design & development • Dissemination


State of the art

• Based on research literature review• Animation: definitions, models,

techniques, typical uses, human factors• Sound: definition, typical uses, human

factors• Current and future use of animations

and sound in ATC HMI


What is animation? Uses of animation

• Alarms / alerts• Feedback for user’s actions • Interface prosody• Error checking• Change notification• To reduce information overload

(Click an image to

start the video)


Animation benefits• Enhanced mutual working (close workers)• Better remote awareness (e.g. coordination)• Better situation awareness (“system” changes)• Enhanced user confidence in the system• Cognitive load reduction (with better feedback)• User efficiency• Ease of use• Better acceptability and satisfaction


Special concerns

• Careful design is required– Avoid activity disruptions– Avoid inconsistent messages

• Implementation issues– Very sensitive to computer performance– Architecture problems– No “classical” implementation method


What is sound? (1)

• A temporal media, more than directional• A semantic media

– Attention and understanding are intertwined


Sound perceptionat

tent

ion

ouïr entendre

écouter comprendre

hear

heed understandstress

interpretation

?

analysed

discarded orintegrated


What is sound? (2)• Relative to the sonic background

– Noise level– Semantic consistency

• Relative to what we see – Find « the image that goes with the sound »– Big/small, far/near– Influenced by what we actually see


Typical uses of sound

• Feedback• Alert• Information conveyer in movies, gamesSound must be considered in the user’s

environment (ecological point of view)Example of alarm sounds mixed with voicesBad: good:


Special concerns

• Very strong feeling among users– Because sound is currently not managed

• Several conflicting goals for design:– Fit into context– Manage attention level required– Convey information


Five ATC scenarios

1) Differentiating STCA & down-linked ACAS-RAalarms differentiation

2) Additional data on line 0 of a flight labelreducing information overload

3) Displaying more information during a STCAreducing cognitive load

4) Displaying calling aircraftreducing errors, cognitive load

5) Timeline-based HMI (flight sequencer)HMI prosody + notification


Methodology issue

• Iterative design methods• How to describe an animation or a sound?• How to exchange, store, insert in a

document, re-use such a description?

• The solution used: storyboards


Three design phases• Storyboards

– many iterations– to explore many different solutions

• Macromedia Flash mock-ups– a few iterations– to better understand the temporal aspects

• Development– for improved realism (traffic, voices…)


A typical storyboard

• From movies/cartoons

• Hand drawn

• With textual comments

• With graphic annotations (movement, zoom, pan…)


Describing an animation

• Left scroll

• Right scroll

• Alert acknow-ledgement


Describing sounds

• Images

• Sound description

• timeline


Macromedia Flash mock-up


Proposed designs

• Demonstrated in the show room (during the workshop)

• Exemplified here with a few videos


sc1: STCA & down-linked ACAS-RA

A STCA alert followed by a down-linked ACAS-RA

(Click the image to

start the video)


sc2: displaying more information on line 0

Opening / closing the three alerts

Acknowledging alerts

Quick mouse in-out(Click an image to start the video)


sc3: displaying more information during a STCA


sc4: calling aircraft identification (watermarking)

(Click the image to

start the video)


sc4: calling aircraft identification (watermarking)

• First call:

• First call outside the view:

• Second call: (Click an image to start the video)


sc5: timeline based HMI

• without animations (there is a trick!)

• with animations & sound (you see the trick!)

(Click an image to

start the video)


sc5: timeline-based HMI

• switch of two flights without animations

• switch of two flights with animations & sound

(Click an image to

start the video)


Lessons learnt: benefits• Very simple animations can very powerful

– Several applications to improve situation awareness

• A new design space: many possible animations types– Concentric circles vs. concentric squares vs. triangles– Color changes– Movements

• Sound is very powerful too– but currently more difficult to harness– first suppress the current nuisances– then designs can be proposed


Lessons learnt: design

Example : use of color to differentiate upper and lower flight in a conflict:


Lessons learnt: designA graphical improvement: the dotted leader line

vs.


Lessons learnt: processes

• Efficiency of the iterative design process– Well known in HMI design– Applicable to ATC– Applicable to animation (and sound?)

• Storyboards for prototyping and describing– Animation and sound– But also HMI usage in general


Open questions...

• Assessment on real size ATC applications

• Benefits are intuitive, not proven

• From storyboards to specifications?

• Implementation, architecture, retrofit?

• Better understanding of sound design needed– Design dimensions– Design elements and context

• Reusable designs patterns for animations in ATC?


ANIMS web site

• state of the art• selection of scenarios for the demonstrators• final report• videos from the demonstrators

http://www.eurocontrol.int/care/innovative/care2/Intuilab/anims.html

Documents

December 9, 2004 - Eurocontrol...December 9, 2004 Christophe Mertz IntuiLab, [email protected] Stéphane ChattyIntuiLab, [email protected] Yves Rinato Intactile Design, [email protected]