Defining Situational Awareness
Significant real-time data immersion is not available for the consuming public yet. More data is available than ever before, but the traditional web browser experience has to grow up quite a bit before it begins to tax the cognitive capabilities of the average human with regards to information flow and memory. Sure, bad design is overloading us already, and yes you can watch real-time posts to DIGG, but imagine 7 to 12 real-time feeds simultaneously informing the user of the state of a given system. According to Micah Endsley [1] we can handle it, now we need to design it. One of the core principles of real-time information design is the establishing and maintaining of situational awareness.
Wickens defines situational awareness as “the continuous extraction of information about a dynamic system or environment, the integration of this information with previously acquired knowledge to form a coherent mental picture, and the use of that picture in directing further perception of, anticipation of, and attention to current events” [2][3]. The Air Force Research Laboratory similarly, and perhaps more simply, defines situational awareness as “how accurately a person perceives his current environment relative to the reality of that environment” [4].
Applying situational awareness to the goal of improving user interface, Davenport identifies three key areas of awareness encountered by the human participant: systems awareness, task awareness, and spatial awareness [5].
- Systems Awareness
This is the human participant’s ability understand the state of his or her equipment. In the cockpit, for example, systems awareness is often abstract and usually requires aggregation of various gauge indications. Knowing that the engine is running hot means nothing by itself, but combined with other systems indicators, may indicate a potential problem. - Task Awareness
This is the human participant’s ability to accurately obtain information relating to tasks relevant to his or her goals. Understanding the current state of all tasks that are underway is critical as poor task awareness increases cognitive load, diminishing overall situational awareness. Good task awareness also enables the human participant to make informed decisions when making changes to the planned task. - Spatial Awareness
Spatial awareness can be broken into two sub-categories; Global and Local. Global spatial awareness is an understanding of the position of the human participant and his or her equipment in the world at that moment. It is the ability to accurately determine relative relationship and trajectory of objects within a global 360-degree sphere of influence and often pertains to the human participant’s relation to a target destination, anticipation of upcoming objects, and other spatial directional judgments. Local spatial awareness pertains to the attitude (vector and velocity) of the human participant’s equipment. This is particularly important when dealing with moving platforms such as aircraft. During observations of pilots using simulator software, it was repeatedly noted that during increased times of cognitive load the first errors made were related to spatial awareness. As the local spatial orientation of aircraft changes rapidly and frequently, the related local spatial SA tended to be the first awareness lost.
Interestingly, because situational awareness is the process of aggregating understanding it becomes evident that a failure at any time during aggregation can cause a series of failures much like a highway pile-up. The aviation community calls this cumulative effect of related incorrectly executed action loops a “Chain of Errors.” The National Transportation Safety Board has documented that a catastrophic failure, like a plane crash, is seldom caused by a single incorrectly executed action but instead by the cumulative effects of multiple incorrectly executed actions.
Situational awareness becomes even more critical in dimensional immersive experiences but we’ll save that discussion for another day.
References:
- Micah R Endsley et all, International Center for Air Transportation, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT, September 1998 Situation Awareness Information Requirements for Commercial Airline Pilots.
- Amy L Alexander and Christopher D Wickens, University of Illinois, Aviation Human Factors Division, Savoy, Illinois 2003 The Effects of Spatial Awareness Biases on Maneuver Choice in a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information
- Amy L Alexander and Christopher D Wickens, University of Illinois, Aviation Human Factors Division, Savoy, Illinois 2004 Measuring Traffic Awareness in an Integrated Hazard Display
- Michael T. Brewer, Major, USAF, April 2000 An Investigation of the Non-Distributed Flight Reference (NDFR) Ownship Status Symbology
- Clark E. Davenport, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB OH, May 30, 1997 Displays for Spatial Situation Awareness: The Use of Spatial Enhancements to Improve Global and Local Awareness
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