During the year 2016, I collaborated within Airbus Top Cockpit R&T engineers, developers and human factors teams, essentially on two projects. I was involved in Synthetic Vision System project.
The Primary Flight Display is one of the most important tool for pilots which provides them direct feedback on the plane location and its environment.
Situation awareness is key in mission management to avoid obstacles, manage flight levels, and approach procedures. In some case scenarios, SVS is intended to provide vision when it is not possible to see. (due to weather conditions, for example)
As a «closed world» display unit, improvements cannot be radicals and must respect flight laws in order to accompany pilots in this new path and never leave the user alone, or lost.
Unfortunately, for confidentiality reasons I cannot expose all the work in details.
First phase: clean the already existing mockup
User Interface (or Human Machine Interface) is graphical, and how you feel with a graphic tool is the same as a tangible tool. Too many times I hear I can't make a product because I do UX UI design, and vice versa.
Special attention must be payed to details in both situations if you want your user to feel good, comfortable and respected. Then he will respect the product.
Starting with a clean up was great, to really understand what was a good or a bad idea, really functional or not, while limiting perception bias due to imprecise components behaviours. However, the objective was to keep the mockup easy to update.
I created a static document in which I saved and described every manually screen captured graphic conflicts. To each issue I proposed an easy and quick solution. Then with engineers and developers we would refer to this document, in order to discuss proposed solutions and update the mockup.
Example of a conflict between foreground graphics and background terrain
Second phase: improve SVS to reinforce situation awareness
Introducing 3D offers new possibilities, based on in-depth contextualisation of information. Now, what is out of the scene or too far can be announced and then pinned on the ground very precisely while being clearly distinct from 2D graphics and symbology.
As feedbacks become more accurate and engaging, challenges are also increasing.
How to be sure pilots won't rely solely on the screen, and will keep using all the avionics ecosystem ?
How to remain light and not be tempted to add more information ?
As a NDA is still on this project, I will not go further on these topics, and follow Airbus public releases planning.
Extended center line, as shown on the video, is a good example of what 3D can bring as a capability to remain simple and efficient for the end user. What I did on this topic is still confidential.
Contact
Thank you!
cover image on the landing page is from the Youtube video © Airbus Aircraft