Human factors considerations for the design and evaluation of electronic flight bags

There is currently great interest in developing stand-alone electronic devices to support flight deck tasks. These devices, called “Electronic Flight Bags,” (EFBs) were originally seen as a repository for electronic documents. Today, some airlines envision EFBs as multi-function devices supporting an array of applications, while others envision a simple low-end device used only for viewing documents, or perhaps for performing flight performance calculations. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is charged with approval of EFBs for installation and use in aircraft. The approval process will be a multidimensional effort requiring an understanding of how the device functions and is used by crews, how the device interacts with other cockpit equipment, and training and operating procedures. Volpe Center has been tasked with writing a document on the human factors issues related to EFBs. Our goal is for the document to be of value to both system evaluators in the FAA and system designers in industry. Our challenge was to create a document that addresses the wide range of proposed EFB implementations, suits the needs of the various readers, and provides useful information for designers and evaluators. In this paper we review the design of the document and how it addresses each of these requirements. We also give an overview of the content of the document and provide illustrative extracts from the text