Previous designs were made from welded structural gauge plate steel. I was presented with the opportunity to redesign the control station to create a new identity for our new, modern, fly-by-wire control system.
The new design utilizes formed plastic panels for mounting the control components, mounted into a steel structure similar to existing designs. I believe the new design stands alone as a vast visual and ergonomic improvement. Shaping the plastic pods was actually a really fun project, and one of the areas where I recognized a need for improved aesthetics. In both of the designs pictured above, we went straight from a computer model to production. This is a huge challenge for any sort of ergonomic and aesthetic design, but I believe it was a huge success.
For both designs, I tried to enact some of the rules from my Simplicity article.
In particular, I attempted to interact more naturally by introducing a wrist wrest in both cases for comfort and easier “feathering” of controls. You will see in the top image that smaller controls were given a pedestal to raise the control elements up to the operator instead of making them reach.
I also worked to logically organize and give a “priority presentation” of the main control elements. For instance on the lower image, you will see that the right hand controls are lowered to create a visual and touch differentiation between the sets of controllers.
