During early fall, Dr. Melissa Beck is usually gearing up for a new semester at Louisiana State University, where she is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology—but not last year. Last year, Dr. Beck was on sabbatical working at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, in Safety Management and Human Factors.
A sabbatical gives college professors a chance to focus on research and expand on skills without the pressure of teaching. Dr. Beck chose to spend time at Volpe with human factors experts.
“The goal for my sabbatical was to take what I’ve learned from my basic research about visual memory and attention, cognition, and perception and apply it at an organization performing cutting-edge research,” said Dr. Beck. During her time at Volpe, Dr. Beck researched the design and usability of flight charts, building upon the work of Volpe colleagues Drs. Divya Chandra and Rebecca Grayhem from Aviation Human Factors.
Research on the Design of Flight Navigation Charts
Drs. Chandra and Grayhem have been conducting research on the design of new charts to support performance-based navigation. As new flight procedures become more precise, charts become more visually complex, which can impact the usability of charts.
Dr. Beck collected eye movement data to measure visual attention during search tasks. She calculated clutter in the charts (visual information that could interfere with a person’s ability to successfully find what they’re looking for) to examine the relationship between clutter and the time it takes to find critical chart information. Dr. Beck applied her knowledge of clutter to ideas from the Volpe colleagues based upon their earlier research.
“Heading into the sabbatical, my hope was to be able to develop long-term relationships with individuals at Volpe so I could continue to work on real-world applications,” said Dr. Beck. Now back to teaching full time again in Baton Rouge, she still has a hand in collaborating with Volpe staff on data analysis. The information gleaned from this research will help inform better design and usability of the charts so that pilots can use them more effectively to follow airspace procedures.
Not only does her work have real-world implications, it pays off in the classroom as well. “I’ve found that my students immediately become more engaged when I talk about my own research,” Dr. Beck explained. “It helps to bring the theories we’re talking about to life.”
Volpe has a long history of working side-by-side with university and college faculty on challenging transportation topics. We are interested in having tenured or tenure-track faculty members, especially those on sabbatical, spend time at our facility working on independent or sponsored research and collaborating with our talented staff.
For more information, visit our website.