A systematic approach to adressing the influence of man-machine interaction on situation awareness

This paper presents a systematic approach towards the study of required situation awareness (RSA) in traffic management context. Current theories are not suitable to clearly define the RSA in complex man-machine interaction (MMI) contexts. Deficiencies of man-machine interaction are difficult to recognize and resolve. This paper analyzes: (i) how the individual, task and system factors define the MMI, (ii) how the MMI and information needs influence the assessment of situation awareness (SA), and (iii) what influence they together have on the required situation awareness. This paper presents a structured analysis scheme, developed to gain more holistic body of knowledge about SA. This scheme was applied in traffic management context to structure cognitive task analysis sessions and to gain insight in SA in complex MMI context. It helps to better understand which information needed by the operator is part of SA, and which information needs to be available, but will not be part of operator’s SA. Future research will focus on developing interface solutions for an awareness-enhancing informing.