Internship w/ Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) @ NASA Ames
Mentor: Quang Dao
Goal: Create 3 display concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) management is & usability test plan for validation
Goal: Create 3 display concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) management is & usability test plan for validation
Step 1: Developing Requirements
Before I could create the display concepts, I needed to develop an understanding of the project and determine the functions that the displays would be used for. In addition to talking with my mentor and the other members of the lab, I reviewed the literature on short-distance urban air travel and low-altitude airspace management. In addition, I studied the industry partners' public documents on the project, and I transcribed and took notes on video and audio data from a cognitive walkthrough that had been conducted shortly before my internship started. At the end of this phase, I created a framework, based on existing air traffic control and UAM traffic management (UTM) principles, on which to orient my displays.
Step 2: Designing the User Interface Concepts
After establishing the requirements for the displays, I used a combination of Axure and Adobe XD to create the 3 concepts.
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Similar to the UTM system, according to the developed framework, UAM airspace would be divided into small micro-volumes in which UAM operators could reserve airspace in which their vehicles could operate. To visualize these reservations, I used Axure to create a calendar-like display. It was crucial that these prototypes display the scheduled time and duration of each reservation, the operators' conformance status, and other relevant operating details.
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The Aggregate DisplayResearch on automation monitoring has shown that humans struggle with monitoring tasks over long periods of time. To maximize operator performance in UAM monitoring, a display should provide users with an "at-a-glance" summary metric to quickly establish their situation awareness (SA). This display should alert operators when intervention is required and quickly direct them to more information. To make this summary metric tangible, I developed a system health measure that takes into consideration the health of each of the "route" subsystems. To learn more about the formulation of these metrics, download the usability report below. This display enabled mouse-over interactions and scroll-able graphs. It was originally created in Adobe Experience Design (XD) and was eventually migrated into Axure when more functionality was required.
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ATC Hybrid display with example data tag and clustered, expandable UAM operations (red rectangle)
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The ATC Radar DisplayUAM is planned to eventually accommodate automated vehicles, but its roots originate in air traffic control (ATC), and many of the first managers will come from the ATC domain. To ease this transition, a concept based on current ATC displays was created. This display required modifications, however, to accommodate the increased traffic density of UAM operations, increased information data tags, and support for both manual and automation intervention.
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Step 3: Planning the Usability Test
The three display concepts were created to be used in human-systems integration research at the center, but to ensure that the usability of the displays would not confound the results of the data, usability testing had to be done. This testing was set for Fall 2019, long after my internship ended, so I created a report to document the usability testing that should be conducted to validate or find improvements for the displays. The measures used in testing include a combination of objective performance measures and subjective user performance and experience questionnaires. This report was meant to enable other researchers to conduct the usability testing. To read the report, click on the "Download Report" button below.