Of programming GUIs, robots and aircraft pilots

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Of programming GUIs,robots andaircraft pilots

• Stéphane Chatty

Yannick Jestin
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Who are our End Users ?

• En Route Air traffic controllers
• GUI development team
• programmers
• interaction designers
• graphic designers
• Human Factors specialists

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From programmers activity

• Software Engineering
• Existing tools to support GUI design and
  programming
• CVS
• Debug
• Iterative design
• Documentation
• etc
• Lessons learnt building tools ( Whizzed, Zinc,
  Ivy, IntuiKit )

Et si nous analysions enfin la tâche des
programmeurs ? (What about analyzing
programmersactivity?) Accot, Chatty, Jestin,
Sire, IHM98
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to programming per se

• How to describe the behaviour of interactive
  objects ?
• How to share this description ?

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Programming an aircraft

• Flight Management System
• series of waypoints
• speed modes
• fuel consumption
• can sometimes be overriden by user
• Flying programming the FMS
• Worse than programming an Emacs mode!
• Searching for a  natural FMS 
• Same holds for driving ATC training simulators
• Less critical
• More demanding (1 pseudo-pilot 15 aircraft)

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Clearances, phraseology, data-link

• Clearance program that the pilot should follow
•  Air France 001, maintain level 350 then after
  PIXEL take direct to JSY 
• Phraseology predefined language constructions
• Avoids lexical and syntactic ambiguity
• And also avoids semantic ambiguity
• Limited set of action patterns
• Data-link towards a computer-based phraseology
• Aspiration to richer language complex
  clearances
• What language? Sequential like voice, graphical?
• From phraseology toward programming

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Common understanding of a sequence

•  Can you pass the Air France behind the
  Alitalia? 
•  I will give a heading of 180 to the Air
  France
•  Er OK...
•  Can I send the Lufthansa across level 290?
•  OK, just wait that the Speedbird and the KLM
  are separated

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Solution-based communication

• relies on recognition of action patterns
• but sometimes recognition fails
• and sometimes there is no known pattern!
• need of shared information on solutions
• Set of named procedures?
• Formalised language (phraseology)?
• Visual language?

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Experiment programming a robot

• French TV, robot contest among universities
• 1999 rule pick more balls than the other

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Goal help the ENAC team to win

• Reprogram the robot between matches
• The team electronicians, aerospace students
• Visual programming of robot behaviour

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The method participatory design

• Scenarios, workshops, etc
• First workshop  give us a sample program 
• Users in front of a white board
• No constraint in expression
• Result unable to express a program!
•  it first turns, then goes this way towards the
  bridge
• except that if there s an adversary pod, then
• Oh, and if it spots an angle for shooting,
  then 
• No programming tool, no program !

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Programming is not so natural...

• Ability to cope with facets of a program
• Sequence
• Conditions
• Reactions
• Constraints
• But no global vision when there are several
  facets
• Current tools and languages support one facet
• So what do we do?
• Research a theory of action?
• Merge existing models in a tool?

Do What I Mean! but what do I mean?
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Conclusion

• Programming ? task of programmers
• Programming is pervasive in ATC for instance
• Programing FMS or simulated aircraft
• Sending clearances
• Sharing solutions
• Cognitive limits
• Sequence, conditions, reactions?
• We need better tools for thinking about action
• Logic-like languages?
• Visual representations?

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Epilogue the ENAC robot...

• Was finally programmed with a hybrid ad-hoc tool
• 2D trajectories
• mini-programs associated to points on the
  trajectory
• Was 16th in 2000
• Wheels were skidding and positionning was
  imprecise
• Was 2nd in 2001!