Situation-Oriented Displays of Space Shuttle Data

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Abstract
Event-based, or situation-oriented, logs of Space Shuttle data were evaluated for their support of flight controllers in reviewing operations. An intelligent system was developed to bundle and annotate the data describing an operational event, or situation. A display tool was also developed to show this situation information to flight controllers, aiding the review of procedure operations and anomalies. Finally, flight controllers informally evaluated the situation displays in the context of scenarios based on recorded mission data. They confirmed that the situation-oriented logs provide useful information for reviewing operations and help the reviewer find relevant details associated with a procedure or anomaly. Initially, these logs were designed to support off-line tasks like shift hand-overs, anomaly analysis, and writing post-mission reports. As we learn more about how to support a quick understanding of events, we can better answer the challenges of real-time monitoring of large amounts of data and management by exception. Miller's 7±2 is an oft-cited but misleading heuristic in user interface design. Miller extracted this rule of thumb by examining data on memory span, among other things. However, memory span procedures measure short-term memory at its upper limits and thereby greatly overestimate humans' ability to easily hold in mind unrelated, linguistic material. Justifications for using a maximum of 3 items as a design heuristic are presented.

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