Design and Evaluation of Color Sets for a Sectorless Radar Display

Abstract

In a sectorless airspace, aircraft are controlled from their entry to their exit of an airspace by one air traffic controller. This approach has many advantages compared to the current sectored concept, in which every air traffic controller is responsible for all aircraft within a certain geographical area. One part of the research addresses the color design of the human-machine interface. In this work, two different color sets for a sectorless radar display were designed and evaluated based on a user-centered design approach. In an experiment with air traffic management experts those color sets indicated better task performance and better subjective rating in a conflict detection task compared to an existing color set. However, these results are not unambiguous and subject to further studies as the development of sectorless airspace concept is continued. Therefore suggestions for future work are provided.