Illustrative mission-control scenario. Inspect the telemetry and choose a response as the power margin changes.
Keep the bigger picture
Mission Control Interface [OpenMCT]
Exploring Attention Tunnelling and Diagnostic Fixation
One alarm is urgent.
It is not the whole story.
A hot wheel motor draws your attention. Elsewhere, the power margin keeps falling. When do you notice that the first explanation is no longer enough?
THE IDEAFind the second fault
Find the second fault
without losing the first.
Explore how mission-control displays support attention and diagnostic revision when more than one problem develops.
Attentional tunnelling means monitoring narrows beyond the initial problem. Diagnostic fixation means an explanation persists despite contradictory evidence. This proposed study separates the two by connecting what operators look at, what they believe and what they do.
THE ENVIRONMENTA rover, a climb
A rover, a climb
and an incomplete diagnosis.
The proposed Open MCT simulation begins with a legitimate wheel-motor temperature alarm during a lunar-rover climb. A separate payload heater then remains energised despite an OFF command. Drive demand falls, but payload current stays high and the power margin deteriorates.
A conventional subsystem display would be compared with a dashboard that places related telemetry together. Critical information, alarms, chart settings and controls would stay matched so the comparison concerns information organisation and relationship cues.
Competing faults
An urgent motor alarm coexists with a separate fault that continues consuming power.
Related telemetry
Temperature, drive demand, payload current and power margin need to be considered together.
A protective decision
Choose an action while new telemetry challenges the initial explanation.
RESEARCH VARIABLESNotice the evidence.
Notice the evidence.
Revise the explanation.
The planned evaluation connects display organisation with fault detection, diagnostic revision and action quality.
THE QUESTION
The same evidence, a different arrangement.
Compare subsystem-based and relationship-based dashboards while keeping the available information and controls matched.
- What changes
- Organisation of telemetry and relationship cues
- What we observe
- Detection of the additional fault before the deadline
Does the display help operators connect evidence across subsystem boundaries?
Connect looking,
reasoning and acting.
Gaze and telemetry
Align viewing behaviour with the signals that were available at that moment.
Working diagnoses
Record how the explanation evolves as the scenario introduces contradictory evidence.
Commands and outcomes
Relate the chosen protective action to the diagnosis and time remaining.
The Open MCT research environment is proposed. This website interaction is an illustrative scenario, not a validated rover model or a completed study. Gaze alone cannot establish understanding or diagnostic fixation.
What else
could be happening?
The project asks how an interface can support that question while the most obvious problem is already demanding an answer.
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