Visual design Analysis: A brief talk on visual design of information

The design of information presentation is an indispensable part of the Web site and software design process. How do you better present effective information? This is a problem that designers often encounter.

The design is interlinked. When we are immersed in the field of software design struggle, have you ever thought about other industries how they do it?

As a result of the enthusiasm of the aircraft, I would like to through some of their discoveries to lead the people to visit this mysterious "world." This paper will focus on the design of aircraft cockpit instrumentation to see how they handle information presentation.

Cockpit instrument Display system is the core of interaction between aircraft and pilots, the rationality of design will directly affect the efficiency of pilots and even flight safety.

DC-3, the largest transport aircraft used by Allied forces in the Second World War.

As the aircraft industry at that time entered a period of maturity, the aircraft's performance compared to a greater advance. In order to achieve high altitude high-speed target, monoplane, landing gear can be retractable design into the mainstream. The number of engines has changed from one to two. With the improvement of the performance and the increase of processing information, the operation requirements of pilots become more and more high.
Let's take a look at how the aircraft designer handled it more than half a century ago.

DC-3 Flight meter (excerpt from "Microsoft Flight X")

　

　　Size, position, color

Due to the technological and cost constraints of the time, DC-3 's instruments used mechanical dials. The entire cockpit Man-machine interface design, from our now look very unfriendly. Pilots often need to find the information they need most in a complex instrument.

Large and small meters are covered with the entire cockpit. At first sight you will confused. But by the size of the instrument and its location, you may be able to vaguely perceive which instruments are more important and which instruments are less important.

When you need to highlight an information or element, make a point by changing their size, position, and color.

The largest and most easily observed instrument is the flight posture indicator. The main function of this instrument is to tell the pilot's current flight posture, whether it is left or right tilt or up-down. This information is very important for flight safety.

Flight Attitude Indicator

The color of the more abundant instrument when the following this. The airspeed meter is mainly used to show the speed of the current aircraft. Color with safety hints on the dial: green, yellow, red. Such a design allows the pilot to scan the meter to get effective information. Also because of its rich color, in the dense meters, can be quickly found.

Air Speed meter

With the development and maturation of information technology, the Man-machine interface of modern passenger plane has changed greatly.

Boeing 747, the world's first two-tier four-engine large wide-body airliner. The flight system is large and complex.

　

　　Re-organizing information

The early aircraft instrumentation design because of the technology and cost constraints, all kinds of information through the mechanical instrument display. Mechanical instruments can only adjust the user's attention distribution by size and position. But in the vast majority of cases, even trained pilots can only focus on a few of the most important messages at the same time. A large amount of information has increased the workload for pilots.

With the development of information technology, aircraft designers began to solve the problem of pilots ' workload in the 1985.

At this time, the new 747-400 on the original 747-300 based on the cockpit design introduced the concept of the glass cockpit (glass cockpit).

747-300 cockpit

747-400 cockpit

The glass cockpit refers to a cockpit with an electronic instrument display function. In the glass cockpit, information is displayed by a flight management computer controlled by a number of monitors to replace the traditional instrument, and the pilot can adjust the information needed to display the flight at any time and focus on the information he needs to focus on.
The application of the technology, the original instrument, keys and dial number from 971 to 365, the need for pilots from three to two people. Although the number of people is small, but the workload has not increased, but reduced.
At the same time, based on the original information classification, into the application situation, user, use the purpose of the factors, the information has been further displayed adjustment, only when needed to display the required information.
Aircraft flying in the sky, daily inspection on the ground, in these two different scenes, the user's attention to the content of the information is different.

Flying in the sky, the pilots are most concerned about: the current aircraft Movement status information, navigation information and so on. An attitude indicator is displayed on the captain's main display, which provides real-time information to the pilot. Therefore, it is more graphic in the presentation of information to facilitate the connection of information.

The attitude indicator integrates the aircraft's speed, altitude, course, pitch, tilt and other information.

Attitude indicator

In the ground maintenance stage, the maintenance personnel most concerned is: the aircraft machinery state information and so on. Once on the sky, the pilot just pay attention to the warning message, the other information on the page can not be concerned about. The following diagram, power system state.

Because it is for the ground maintenance personnel to use, the information did not do too much graphical display, but also highlighted the data accuracy.

Power System State

　

　　A figurative expression.

How to describe flying posture? Once in front of designers, they invented the flight attitude indicator. By simple point, line to image to identify the aircraft status. The blue represents the sky, the black represents the ground, the middle horizontal line represents the airplane itself.

In the interface of the state information of the fuel system of Boeing 747, the arrangement of the engine and the oil tank is basically consistent with the position in reality. Green fuel output path that organically links the engine to the fuel tank being used. This kind of information expression and people's cognition is consistent, very intuitive. The pilot can grasp the information in a short time by scanning.

Fuel System Status

Aircraft Fuel System Entity location

When dealing with information display, we designers can consider helping users to organize the existing information, find out the key points, and show them in the context of the information produced.
Aviation, as my personal hobby, if there are flaws, please forgive me. The purpose of this paper is to broaden our horizons. In the design of the time, pay attention to other industries, there may be unexpected gains.