In visually demanding environments like working positions in air traffic control, there is a risk of missing important information. Attention support might help to reduce this, but there is a risk that it introduces new issues in the form of distractions or increased visual load. The work presented in this paper explores the concept of Soft Visual Cues, with the aim to make the operator aware of missing information, but doing it discreetly enough only to be noticed when the operator is scanning the area where the information is present, thereby complementing the concepts of attention guidance, alarms, and subtle gaze direction. The qualitative evaluation performed aimed primarily at catching the operators (air traffic controllers) first impressions. Focus was on air traffic control, but was complemented with vessel traffic service and train control environments and operators. The results from air traffic control showed a preference for symbol property changes related to geometry rather than for colour or opacity changes as soft visual cues. The comparison to the other domains highlighted the contextual dependence, visual context and process context, of the concept.

Lack of support for handling a reduction of autonomy in a highly autonomous automation may lead to a stressful situation for a human when forced to take over. We present a design approach, the Reduced Autonomy Workspace, to address this. The starting point is that the human and the automation work together in parallel control processes, but at different levels of autonomy cognitive control, such as setting goals or implementing plans, which is different from levels of automation. When autonomy is reduced, the automation should consult the human by providing information that has been aligned to the level at which the human is working, and the timing of the provision should be adapted to suit the humans work situation. This is made possible by allowing the automation to monitor the human in a separate process. The combination of these processes, information level alignment and timing of the presentation, are the key characteristics of the Reduced Autonomy Workspace. The Reduced Autonomy Workspace consists of four phases: Identification of the need; evaluation of whether, and, if so, when, and how to present information; perception and response by the human; implementation of a solution by the automation. The timing of the information presentation should be adapted in real-time to provide flexibility, while the level of the information provided should be tuned offline and kept constant to provide predictability. Use of the Reduced Autonomy Workspace can reduce the risk for surprising, stressful hand-over situations, and the need to monitor the automation to avoid them.