Our objective is to identify image schematic metaphors (ISM) in the application domain of air trafic control and thereby learn about controllers' mental models. Through tagging ISM in controllers' spoken language, we identified metaphors that indicate three perspectives on air trafic, namely (1) a geographical perspective of an aircraft's physical position and flight path, (2) a metaphorically instantiated distribution of responsibility for air trafic, and (3) metaphors referring to the organizational level of air trafic management. We discuss target domains that may pose particular challenges for the design of coherent interfaces due to their mapping to multiple source domains, sometimes competing with physical mappings. Our main preliminary contribution is a list of metaphorical instantiations serving as foundation for innovative, yet intuitive-to-use interfaces in future prototypes for the context of air trafic control.
Image schema are learned in early childhood through experiences with environmental
conditions, processes and constraints [
In safety-critical domains, such as air trafic control, a fast performance that is not impeded
by complex interfaces is crucial. Air trafic controllers monitor and coordinate trafic within
their sector through communication with pilots and controllers of neighboring sectors. By law
controllers are required to document any clearance they give to aircraft. Developments of their
workstation have so far been mainly technology-driven. Past ethnographic studies revealed
that existing interfaces enforced a dualistic perspective on air trafic separating the perspective
on physical air trafic (i.e. the radar image on a vertical display) from the management of
responsibilities regarding the same trafic (i.e. documentation and communication with paper
lfight strips on a commonly horizontal interface) [
Within the many departments and roles that are responsible for a smooth procession of air trafic our initial focus lies on approach controllers. The main task of approach controllers entails picking up incoming air trafic, channeling it, and feeding it in a structured manner towards the airport. Oftentimes they additionally take responsibility for outgoing trafic crossing their sector. In sum, our research question is “What cognitional structures of air trafic controllers on the approach position can be derived from image schematic metaphors occurring in their work place related language?”.
Air trafic controllers’ language on the job and particularly during radio communication is
highly standardized for minimizing the risk of misunderstandings. This includes linguistic
reductions such as the omission of prepositions, which often help to identify ISM [
I I I I I I
Coded ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ 1a 1b 2a 2b 2c … 1a 1b 2a 2b 2c … Σ 8 hours 69 000 words >2000 instances 133 metaphors 35 metaphors
First, we transcribed the recorded interviews. Then three of the authors mutually coded ISM in
the first interview. For the remaining seven interviews, two of the authors mutually coded ISM
in the transcript and discussed their findings with a third author until achieving consent on all
instances. Coding was guided by the list of 47 image schemas from the categories BASIC, SPACE,
CONTAINMENT, MULTIPLICITY, PROCESS, FORCE, and ATTRIBUTE reported by Hurtienne
et al. [
Our main result is a list of 35 domain-specific ISM instantiated in controllers’ spoken language (see Table 1). From a participative analysis with controllers, we learned that some labels for target domains are linked to two or three source domains (i.e. image schemas) and sometimes are additionally used as labels for the physical world.
Exemplary instantiation ”Would you accept the aircraft higher?” ”Can you take out the speed of that aircraft?”
”Allow them to fly into Airspace Charlie.” ”They seem to go from this airspace to that airspace.”
”I give him an ILSaapproach.” ”We should open the feeder to raise capacities.”
”I have no capacities for additional aircraft.” ”She is working in the north.” [license, position]
”Bring them all on the downwind for me.” ”That aircraft is south of the downwind.” [geographic]
”This aircraft is at 5 mile final.” [fixed landmark] ”This aircraft is on the final.” [final part of approach] ”They are on the emergency frequency.”
”I am out, you can go in.” ”She passed me that frequency.” ”Go ahead, send them to the feeder.”
”You sit on feeder today.” ”I will open up the second feeder.” [position] ”They climbed up to flight level 280.”
”They are in flight level 280.” ”That is not written on the flight strip.” ”I forgot to tell you at the handover that […].”
”The flight level is written at my label.” ”Behind a heavy I need 5, else not less than 3 miles.”
”This aircraft has 6 miles.” ”They come in 4 mile intervals.”
”I sent it to the pilot.” ”I can give you the southern runway.”
”The runway is closed.” ”Do you have the <name>-sector?” [license] ”I need an extra sector.” [division of responsibility]
”Can you take out the speed of that one?” ”To talk to the tower I need to open the squawk box.”
”Please communicate that over the squawk box.” ”The tower is nice.” [operator in the tower position] a ILS = Instrument Landing System b Generalizes to other working positions [Tower, Feeder, Pick Up, Radar Controller]
One prevalent example in approach controllers’ language is final , which refers to the final approach slope (SURFACE) or a fixed point on it (LOCATION) – depending on the preposition (see Table 1).
Another example is frequency, which is associated with diferent source domains according to context. After receiving a frequency from a colleague (OBJECT), controllers go into or out of a frequency (CONTAINER), while they perceive other actors as being always on the frequency (SURFACE). Controllers have validated all of these linguistic instances, albeit they claim imagining the frequency mostly as a CONTAINER. Similarly, the communication interface squawk box changes its role from entering the channel (CONTAINER) to communicating over it (SURFACE).
Representative for a third category of contradictory ISM is feeder, which mostly refers to the position on a task level in approach control that previous sectors send aircraft to (goal of a PATH), and who feeds the stream of approaching aircraft towards the airport. Additionally, controllers refer to the associated workspace on which they sit (SURFACE) as feeder and speak about the administrative act of opening the feeder position (CONTAINER), that is, assigning controllers to work there. Within the same category are miles as the typical unit for horizontal distance measurement in air trafic control. Controllers mostly use them when referring to spacing between aircraft: aircraft can possess a number (COUNT) of miles (OBJECT). Yet miles also describe the separation intervals in which aircraft arrive (CONTAINER, see Table 1) and label certain virtual landmarks in the physical domain (“I drive it in via 8 miles” ).
Finally, there is the target domain sector. Similar to feeder described above, it can be used like a CONTAINER when opening a position or sector. Mostly, controllers treat sectors as OBJECTs. Interestingly, however, the meaning changes with the semantic context. Possession of a sector is synonym for the license to work this sector. Requiring an additional sector, on the other hand, points towards the need of splitting the responsibility for a currently merged air space.
In the context of air trafic control, some source domains are relevant both physically and
metaphorically. Cardinal directions, for example, are geographical labels for points or regions
(in the physical world or on a map) [
Our first association with the term runway is the physical surface. On the organizational level, controllers use runway with respect to the clearance for landing on a certain runway. Here, clearances are treated as OBJECTs that can be handed around. A further usage of runways is with respect to their availability – instantiated in language as CONTAINERs that can be closed, opened and contain a certain capacity.
While aircraft are indisputably physical objects and containers, controllers use the term also on a metaphorical level depicting responsibility. For instance, controllers speak about passing the aircraft around (like an OBJECT), which is physically neither happening nor possible, or reducing its velocity by “taking out the speed” of this CONTAINER.
Finally, tower and aircraft are sometimes instantiated as personifications representing the people operating them. Controllers would talk about personality traits or states of the tower [instead of the tower operator] or explain what they told the aircraft [instead of the pilots].
Most users see digital forms as containers they can fill in/out. Despite the digitalization and context menus popping up, controllers refer to the document of a [digital] flight strip still as SURFACE on which they can write. In contrast, the labels on the radar providing information such as current speed or altitude of each individual aircraft are instantiated as LOCATIONs. A reason may be that each label is attached to the visual representation (head symbol) of the physical position detected by radar. This ISM contradiction may be particularly interesting when attempting to merge the two tasks of monitoring and documenting into one interface.
Clearances pose an interesting special case. Controllers generally refer to clearances as OBJECTs given to pilots or aircraft (as a personification of pilots). For instance, they give the clearance for climbing or descending to a certain flight level, approaching the airport or landing on a runway. However, when giving the clearance to reduce speed or altitude, controllers also speak of “taking speed out of” an aircraft, which still requires giving a permission but on a metaphorical level opposes the direction of the gesture. In detail, the controllers can only give permissions but not physically take out speed of aircraft themselves, as this is the pilots’ responsibility.
As expected, controllers’ view on air trafic entails the division into a physical and an administrative perspective – both manifested in language. In detail, rooted in traditional interface design for air trafic control aircraft are not only localized geographically in three dimensional space but also allocated to a sector, which involves a responsibility dimension. To ensure innovative, intuitive interaction, designers should consider insights on controllers’ mental models through the ISM occurring in their language as inspiration when merging the two – or even three – views on air trafic into one coherent interface.
Interestingly, we found the meaning of the target domains to vary with the syntactic (prepositions) or semantic context of instantiations. Depending on the context, target domains may refer to physical or administrative aspects of controllers’ work – sometimes with contradicting metaphorical patterns. Designers of future interfaces need to treat these terms and symbolic representations in their interface drafts with great care. As a foundation for novel workstations that unite the tasks of air trafic controllers, we encourage the usage of ISM listed and described in our results.
A first caveat is that our data are exclusively based on interviews with approach controllers
whom we observed and interviewed after a shift on the feeder position. Looking at the data,
some metaphors had been actively used by only few or even single controllers during the
interviews, but were validated in the final step. Following the thoughts of Kövecses [
If ISM in language are not a product of controllers’ cognitive perspective on the domain but merely induced by the interface – as is likely the case for digital flight strips and labels – they might well be variable between diferent control centers or even diferent positions with varying workstation setups. Additionally, nuances of meaning in the ISM presented here may have changed through translation. Therefore, future work should test the generalizability of the ISM we identified and complement the list with diverging findings from other control centers, languages and national air trafic control systems and cultures.
Low numbers of annotators are a common limitation in manual ratings and may cause
subjective bias to the identified ISM [
We tagged ISM in transcribed interviews with air trafic controllers and validated the most relevant and prevalent instantiations with experienced controllers. Our findings may fuel theoretical discussions about the intersections of physical and metaphorical worlds in persons’ mental models. For practitioners, the list of identified metaphors may serve as inspiration for innovation in air trafic controllers’ workstations. In future work, we aim to create interfaces based on the identified ISM that challenge the current layout. There are two research questions to be addressed in future design processes and long-term evaluations: Is it even feasible to create an interface that unites the diferent perspectives on air trafic control, which are currently so clearly distinct in the interface as well as the controllers’ mental models? If this is not the case, but following political decisions, the tasks are still consolidated into one interface – how long does it take for controllers’ language to adapt?
We thank all air trafic controllers for their precious time in this explorative approach and members of the DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung for their support at various stages. We appreciate the anonymous reviewers’ feedback that led to improvements of this paper. Part of this work was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Afairs and Energy. [16] Robert Tscharn. Innovative and age-inclusive interaction design with image-schematic metaphors. Thesis, University of Wuerzburg, 2019. [17] Armin Winkler, Kristian Baumann, Stephan Huber, Robert Tscharn, and Jörn Hurtienne.
Evaluation of an application based on conceptual metaphors for social interaction between vehicles. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, page 1148–1159. Association for Computing Machinery, 2016. [18] Eloi Zablocki, Patrick Bordes, Laure Soulier, Benjamin Piwowarski, and Patrick Gallinari.
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