Color is critical in reducing workload and enhancing situation awareness for shuttle astronauts. THE SPACE SHUTTLE WAS DEVELOPED in the 1970s using technology that was advanced for its time. The recent upgrade, called the Multifunction Electronic Display System (MEDS), helped to remedy the obsolescence of the original cockpit components, but MEDS did not resolve the human factors drawbacks of the legacy cockpit displays. To address these deficiencies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) initiated a usability-oriented modification called the cockpit avionics upgrade. The goals were to redesign the displays to improve situation awareness, reduce workload, and improve performance. In this article, we describe the human factors principles that guided the redesign.
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