A cognitive ergonomist is investigating how different alarm modalities affect the situational awareness and cognitive workload of railway signallers in a high-density transit hub. The hub employs 85 professional signallers. The researcher compares a newly designed multimodal alert system (which uses synchronized spatial audio and haptic seat vibrations) against the standard visual-only flashing warning system on the main console screen during simulated emergency routing events.
Suggest one open question the ergonomist could use to obtain additional qualitative feedback from the railway signallers regarding their cognitive processing during this study.
