It is rarely possible to star with a blank sheet of paper designing a cockpit layout. There are historical positionings and conventions, cultural preferences (left to right, top to bottom you say ?) .
There is an interesting Airbus Flight Ops Briefing Note:
Human Factors Aspects in Incidents/Accidents in which the Operations Golden rules which address possible causal effects under the heading of "Use of Automation" cite:
- Lack of situational awareness
- Interaction with Automation
- Overreliance on automation
- Lack of Crew Cross Check
It also supplies a number of examples of possible hazards which can result from such interaction. My point in mentioning this is that in an integrated instrument suite, almost
any aspect of the HMI can cause such problems if the pilot is abstracted from full control.
For example, if a certain status information is missing from a display format then it may be assumed by the pilot that it is invalid (as one generally hides non valid display data) but it may simply have been moved in a software update to a different panel layout in this new cockpit...
re. comments on physical reversionary instrument more reliable: glass cockpits are great for presenting fused sensor inputs, and integrated displays. The theory is that NTD displays can be routed to any identical glass panel in the cockpit in the event of a hardware failure so should providing
redundancy of display device as well as source.
hugel