The Interaction of Spatial and Color Proximity in Aircraft Stability Information Displays

Abstract

The objective of a complex display design is to provide information in a way that maximizes the user's ability to process that information. This paper explores the effects of manipulating the spatial and color proximity among information displays relevant to aircraft stability during both integration and focused attention tasks. The principle of compatibility of proximity (Wickens, 1987) suggests that tasks requiring the operator to integrate multiple sources of information are better served by close display proximity while tasks that require focused attention on specific sources of information are better served by more separate displays. Color proximity results clearly supported this principle and showed that using a common color (i.e. close proximity) to code different information sources facilitated integration performance while using separate colors to code different information sources facilitated focused attention performance. However, close spatial proximity did not foster integration. Instead, distant spatial proximity yielded superior performance for both focused attention and integration tasks.