Falls Short as a Cockpit Flight Tool
The company I fly for decided to adopt this app in order to replace the paper flight plan, store documents/manuals, and communicate weight-and-balance information. After using it for several months, here is my personal opinion:
While the app aims to support in-flight tracking of progress, time, and fuel, its current design and behavior suggest it was not developed with sufficient input from active, experienced pilots or validated in real-world cockpit use. The interface is not intuitive under flight conditions. Common tasks require unnecessary steps, and critical information is not presented in a way that supports quick, low-workload interpretation. In a cockpit environment—especially during high-workload phases—interaction must be immediate and self-evident. This app frequently requires attention that should remain outside the cockpit.
Font sizes are consistently too small for practical in-flight use, to the point that the use of iPadOS accessibility magnification has been suggested as a workaround. In addition, the inability to zoom or scale the display significantly reduces usability. In turbulence or under varying lighting conditions, reading becomes difficult and distracting.
The dark, bluish-green background further degrades readability due to insufficient contrast between text and data fields. Rather than improving night usability, this color choice makes interpretation more difficult both day and night, increasing eye strain and time-to-comprehension.
The layout does not follow established aviation human-factors principles. Information hierarchy is unclear, critical data does not stand out, and visual scanning is inefficient. These design choices increase cognitive load at times when it should be minimized. In addition, the app has intermittent synchronization issues. These reduce confidence and increase workload.
Bottom Line Although the app may function adequately in a well-lit office environment, it falls short as a cockpit tool. The combination of non-intuitive workflows, poor readability, limited display scaling, and suboptimal color and contrast choices strongly suggests a lack of real-world pilot involvement during design and testing. Significant improvements in human-factors design, readability, and reliability would be required for this app to be suitable for serious operational use in the cockpit.
While the app aims to support in-flight tracking of progress, time, and fuel, its current design and behavior suggest it was not developed with sufficient input from active, experienced pilots or validated in real-world cockpit use. The interface is not intuitive under flight conditions. Common tasks require unnecessary steps, and critical information is not presented in a way that supports quick, low-workload interpretation. In a cockpit environment—especially during high-workload phases—interaction must be immediate and self-evident. This app frequently requires attention that should remain outside the cockpit.
Font sizes are consistently too small for practical in-flight use, to the point that the use of iPadOS accessibility magnification has been suggested as a workaround. In addition, the inability to zoom or scale the display significantly reduces usability. In turbulence or under varying lighting conditions, reading becomes difficult and distracting.
The dark, bluish-green background further degrades readability due to insufficient contrast between text and data fields. Rather than improving night usability, this color choice makes interpretation more difficult both day and night, increasing eye strain and time-to-comprehension.
The layout does not follow established aviation human-factors principles. Information hierarchy is unclear, critical data does not stand out, and visual scanning is inefficient. These design choices increase cognitive load at times when it should be minimized. In addition, the app has intermittent synchronization issues. These reduce confidence and increase workload.
Bottom Line Although the app may function adequately in a well-lit office environment, it falls short as a cockpit tool. The combination of non-intuitive workflows, poor readability, limited display scaling, and suboptimal color and contrast choices strongly suggests a lack of real-world pilot involvement during design and testing. Significant improvements in human-factors design, readability, and reliability would be required for this app to be suitable for serious operational use in the cockpit.
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