Fin, Whale, Coin and Flatterer: Exploring Tangibles for Air Traffic Control

Abstract

Air traffic control (ATC) is a safety-critical work domain that has a history of applying tangible elements in its workstations. In the past, development was mostly technology-driven, which resulted in usability challenges like handling multiple input and output devices. In this work, we followed a user-centred design approach with air traffic controllers (ATCOs). Starting from the users' need for haptic feedback, we developed a novel tangible interaction concept for ATC. We iterated a set of tangibles - Fin, Whale, Coin, and Flatterer - based on formative evaluations with 24 ATCOs. From our qualitative results we extracted dimensions relevant to ATCOs"user experience including familiarity, efficiency and engagement. Our results can provide guidance and inspiration for the design of future ATC interfaces.