Would you rather drive a car with a single window onto the road or be a passenger in a vehicle with a panoramic view?
Users are less effective when overwhelmed by choices, distractions, and noise. A well designed vehicle for safe and effective driving in novel terrain is one whose cockpit displays only essential information needed for reactions and decision making. Layout and field of view prioritizations should be given to those gauges and displays with the content most relevant to a driver’s role (e.g. each of a captain/pilot/navigator/engineer of vessel should have information visibility tailored to their unique role and intended area of influence). This approach is best suited for structured environment with known range of conditions, obstacles, and goals (e.g. a car with a specific destination driving on public roads and under typical weather conditions). These are also the type of structured roles most likely to be eventually subject to outsourcing via automation.
For those types of missions where the objectives are less clear or subject to changes due to environmental influences, restriction or siloing of information flow can hamper a team’s ability to react to shifting conditions. In such cases, more of the burden is placed on the drivers to self identify items of relevancy vs distraction. In such a mission it thus becomes a required core competency of the user to rapidly identify whether a gauge, KPI, or information stream has relevance or could be of use in dealing with current conditions or expected future challenges. This competency is especially critical in environments where useful content is interspersed with that which is false, misleading, or even potentially poisonous. It is this particular self filtering competency that should be a key qualifier for selecting those to participate in such environments.
*For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
Albums that were referenced here or otherwise inspired this post:
Paul is Live — Paul McCartney
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For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
