Effects of an Ecological Interface on Flight Training Effectiveness

For Ecological Interface Design (EID), the underlying constraints and properties of an operator’s work domain are analysed and used as a basis for the design of the information displays, so that these may reveal these underlying mechanisms. Most evaluations for EID have been performed with expert or trained participants. However, it can be hypothesised that the effects of EID will also change the way tasks are learned by novices; since the EID designs support direct manipulation, and at the same time show the constraints in the work domain, a novice would be able to perform the task as a skill, employing the direct manipulation features of the interface, while at the same time learning the underlying constraints from the work domain. Our interest is the effect of an EID display on skill acquisition in a flying task. To this end we evaluated the EID display by (Amelink, Mulder, van Paassen, & Flach, 2005) in a study with novice pilots, learning flight path and speed control of a simulated aircraft. It was found that initial performance by the EID group was better than by a control group, the EID group also showed more consistent and homogeneous behavior. The EID display did not lead to increased workload, as measured with the Rating Scale for Mental Effort. Asymptotic performance levels for both groups were not significantly different.