Can we do better with cockpit designs?

The typical cockpit has hundreds of tiny switches, gauges, and buttons. Keeping track of all the spinning dials and flashing lights can be overwhelming for even the most experienced pilots. The average human has a capacity limit of seven plus or minus two items. Once this limit is exceeded, the individual becomes unable to distinguish, accurately, between a set of stimuli whether it be a dashboard of LEDs or a wall of gauges. The cockpit provides more information than any one individual can take in at once. The pilot can only focus on a few displays and therefore is incapable of getting a full assessment of how his or her plane is performing at any single moment. This can potentially be very dangerous for all the passengers. Many accidents happen when a pilot becomes so preoccupied with one reading that he or she overlooks another. Maybe this is why larger commercial planes require two pilots.

This problem of capacity limits also brings about a number of other problems. Longer search times are one of them. If you have ten identical switches and the pilot needs to find the one that lowers the landing gear, a couple seconds can be the difference between a crash landing and a safe one. Another problem comes with multiple stimuli. If a dashboard has a number of gauges that have built in LEDs which flash when the gauge reading is at a dangerous level there is a possibility of illusory conjunctions. Let’s say a gauge flashed momentarily, the pilot may mistakenly believe that one gauge, with a certain reading, flashed when in reality an adjacent one, with a different reading, did.

When you imagine a cockpit what colors come to mind? You’d probably think along the lines of black and white. Brushed metal, stainless steel, and dully colored plastics are what I’m imagining. This centralized coloring scheme may be very aesthetically pleasing but the lack of color provides little contrast and thus poor visibility. If you can’t readily locate and identify an object there will be longer search times. Rather than using a grayscale, cockpit designers should adopt a more vibrant selection of colors. Wouldn’t it be easier to find a lime green button than a milky white one among a sea of grey controls?

A cockpit also severely lacks in natural mapping. With the number of controls and displays that need to be cramped into the limited amount of space in a cockpit there isn’t much liberty as to the logical placement of controls. Switches are almost arbitrarily placed to save space. At times they are all bundled up into the same panel to save on manufacturing costs. For certain controls and displays, such as autopilot equipment and altimeters, there is no way to apply natural mapping.

So what are some good design choices found in a cockpit? For one, cockpit controls have good affordances. Buttons afford pressing. Levers afford pulling. Knobs afford turning. Switches afford flipping. Although an individual may not know the functionality of a certain control on a plane, there is no confusion as to how it is operated. For example, nobody would try to press a knob. It just doesn’t make sense. The cockpit also employs good constraints. Shutting down an engine isn’t as simple as pressing a single button. Instead it is a process consisting of a number of actions. Similarly, opening an airplane door requires a large swinging motion. These constraints are put in place to prevent fatal accidents.