EFIS aesthetics

[Hardy Heinlin]

[Hardy Heinlin]

I'd like to congratulate the designers of the PFD tapes again! :-)

I just realized that the scroll speeds of the left and right tapes -- I mean speed and altitude tapes -- are equal when a standard deceleration runs, that is: 1 knot per second and -500 fpm.

You get a nice symmetric picture.

On the left tape you see the speed target rising from the bottom, on the right tape there's the target altitude rising from the bottom. These two targets left and right are at the same pixel height, and they rise at the same rate; this way you can see ahead if the target speed and altitude will be reached at the same time. If the altitude target is higher than the speed target, pixel-wise, you will be too fast at that altitude.

And this is just one of those many beautiful visual harmonics in the EFIS concert.


Cheerio,

|-|ardy

[Will]

On the other hand, if you're descending at 500 fpm while while accelerating at 1 kt per second, your eye might fool you into thinking you're banking to the right...?

[Hardy Heinlin]

Mm, no, the big, bright, blue, brown horizon in the middle is much more dominant.


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[frumpy]

And this is just one of those many beautiful visual harmonics in the EFIS concert.

I spoke to a 744-pilot, he didn't know about it. So I assume many,
if not most pilots are not aware of that fact. I wonder if the EFIS-designers
intented that synchronicity, and if yes, why didn't they put it in
the manuals or learning curriculum?

[Will]

Mm, no, the big, bright, blue, brown horizon in the middle is much more dominant.

It sometimes breaks though...

[Hardy Heinlin]

I wonder if the EFIS-designers
intented that synchronicity, and if yes, why didn't they put it in
the manuals or learning curriculum?

That effect may be just pure coincidence, I don't know. But the designers for sure have experimented with various tape scales to get the best man-machine interface, which might have led to that effect indirectly.

When you have unlimited freedom for screen design, new questions arise. What's the best interval for 10 knots? 9 millimeters or 13? What for 100 feet? 14 or 17 millimeters? Etc. You have to find the best compromise to get the best overall picture of trends and states in all  situations. Don't make it too coarse, and not too fine. Or put the finer stuff off the tape,  into those extra black boxes, and make single scrolling digits. When we look at these tools today, it's nothing special. But a few decades ago some people had to design it from scratch on a white paper. Steam gauges were the only source of inspiration, probably.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Richard McDonald Woods]

I have also been thinking of the inverse - the ability of humans to interpret information in unconscious ways which may be as or not intended by the designers. I suppose it's all tied up in the differences between looking and seeing. A really fascinating subject.

[Will]

There's an entire industry devoted to this, called "information architecture." The engineers call themselves "user experience designers," or UX designers. It happens that I have two friends who do this. (They both tend to wear black jeans, listen to interesting music, and carry messenger bags. They also both love Apple products.)

Their clients already know the content that they want to display and they already have programmers to do the work. The UX designer himself doesn't do programming, but comes in and makes the layout intuitive, and visually appealing.

Both of my friends have worked on really interesting projects. The clients are usually companies wanting to make websites, but occasionally they do video games or other types of interactive installations. Neither of my friends has ever worked on an airplane.

[John Golin]

This is an area I find fascinating... back in uni part of my psychology degree involved Environmental Psychology which covered how people interact with their environment and how important such considerations are when designing, well, anything.

I am constantly frustrated by obvious errors and omissions in systems and software; even when I am the guilty party!

Interestingly some conventions vary with culture - e.g.
- In the US, a (light)switch up is on; in Australia it's the opposite
- In western cultures, we read top left to bottom right. Some other cultures read right to left

It's amazing how many basics  get ignored or turned about, for no good reason e.g.

- clockwise is increase, anticlockwise is decrease
- Red is bad, Green is good
- a light shows the current state
- a button label shows the FUTURE state (or action)

etc

[martin]

It's amazing how many basics  get ignored or turned about, for no good reason

Well, I shouldn't perhaps enter into a discussion of "turned about" with someone from Down Under, but here goes    

- Red is bad, Green is good

Good reason: Evolution!
¤ The original significance (apes in trees, remember? :twisted: ) is
"green = leaves", "red = fruit, FOOD!";
therefore "green = background, ok to skip", "red = important, look!".
Thus:
greenleavesjunglejungleleavestwigsleavesyetanotherleafberrymoreleavestwigstoo
noendofleavesiwishthereweremoreberriesleafleavesjungleleavesandonandon
[size=8](I think there is some neurophysiological context, too, about the sensitivity of the respective receptors, but I forget the details.)[/size]
¤ And then the secondary shift: "danger/warning = important, therefore paint red".
¤ Only then comes the association of red = bad (and not everywhere: e.g. AFAIK for the Chinese, red is the main festive colour (and white the colour of mourning, for that matter)).

- a button label shows the FUTURE state (or action)

Ah yes, been there, done that.  
However, "turned about" depends how you perceive a button: If you look at it as an actuator, it makes sense that it shows the state commanded by actually actuating it. (To make this clearer it should perhaps have an exclamation mark: "Gear down!".
But of course some people see the button caption as a state  annunciation "Gear [is] down", although (considering the original role of a button) that should better be a separate function, such as the "lights" you also mention.

Cheers,
Martin!

PS

(They both tend to wear black jeans, listen to interesting music, and carry messenger bags. They also both love Apple products.)

Ah! Now I know why I couldn't survive in that job!  :mrgreen:

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Martin: may it be one level more complex? Green is ok, red is BLOOD! PANIC! RUN AWAY! ? And that the food, being interested in being eaten and distributed around, got itself a nice colour later on by stupid luck and natural selection?


Jeroen

[Hardy Heinlin]

Fire

[martin]

red is BLOOD! PANIC! RUN AWAY! ?

But that would require the insight that other creatures' blood portends trouble for me -- seems to be a bit too abstract for the period I had in mind. (If I see my own blood, it's generally too late already...). Something like this does work for "warning" sounds (if my buddy yells, I run), but I have never heard any report of reactions to equivalent colour cues. It seems to me finding the Right Stuff to eat is more elementary.

Besides, how would we then ever have made the transition from vegetarian (if that did come first) to scavenger and omnivore?

M

[Hardy Heinlin]

Do vegetarians eat bacteria?

[Will]

I think the choice of red for signaling is a very recent invention, and that choice of color may be a result of optic properties. I don't ever recall any red warning signs from previous centuries.

The association to love is easier to intuit: think of the pleasant warmth of glowing embers, that's kinda nice, right?

[Hardy Heinlin]

I think the psychological effect of colors works in all cultures. Green calms down. Blue is cold and fresh. Red is hot. Yellow is a mix of green and red.

[martin]

Do vegetarians eat bacteria?

Depends how they (the vegetarians) define themselves:
¤ "don't eat animals": can eat bacteria (coz they ain't no animals)
¤ "eat only plants": can not eat bacteria (coz they ain't no plants either)

But everyone can eat virusses, coz they ain't no life.

Hyvää ruokahalua!
M

[frumpy]

And that the food, being interested in being eaten and distributed around, got itself a nice colour later on by stupid luck and natural selection?

Yes, I think the red color of the apple is there to attract other animals to
get eaten and getting their seeds distributed, which increases
the fitness of the apple.
What may also play a role is that the color red itself is on one side of the spectrum
visible to the human eye. On the other side and in the middle is green and blue,
colors we see everywhere - so red is quite different and easy to detect.

Concerning the bacteria - I think what makes a difference is the
state of mind, or consciousness of the living creature. A pig or
cow is much more able to suffer just by anticipation of an
unpleasant state than a paramecium or even bacteria. So if
the motivation of a vegetarian is to prevent suffering, then
bacteria are much more okay than higher developed species.

Back to the EFIS: I think what developers do is to check the maximum
ability of the human in percepting optical stimuli (that means long bars
and high resolution) and slowing it down to adapt to pilots looking only
a fraction of their time onto it. So basically its arbitrary, they get the
idea, put it into a system and let people testfly it in multitasking environment.
The version with the highes accuracy or least error gets the job
So, I don't believe the symmetrical picture of both bars
moving at the same rate was really intended, just a by-product.
However, I think it's worth teaching pilots to pay attention to it.

[Hardy Heinlin]

I think the red color of the ara is there to attract other ara, for sexual and social purposes.

Tautology: Isn't sex social?

On the other side and in the middle is green and blue,
colors we see everywhere - so red is quite different and easy to detect.

You can also apply a circle with no open end: red ... yellow ... green ... cyan ... blue ... magenta ... red ...

I.e. from red via magenta to blue.


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