A320
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 240; Flight Crew Total 17500; Flight Crew Type 3500
Human-Machine Interface; Confusion
Other Unwanted Situation
Manuals; Aircraft; Human Factors
A checklist design issue arose on a ferry flight I flew tonight. When looking at the A320 Ferry Checklist on the iPad the First Officer initially thought no doors were supposed to be armed. The first bullet on that page is 'All cabin...doors...Arm.' He thought that this was bullet #6 under the header: 'If cabin will be occupied' which is on the previous page. Since our cabin was not occupied he thought this bullet did not apply. When you look at this on the iPad; it's not hard to see how this can be misinterpreted. I pulled out the QRH and on that it was readily apparent that the 'All cabin...doors...Arm' bullet had a different indentation than the proceeding five bullets under the 'If cabin will be occupied' header. This indentation is not readily apparent on the iPad though. I'm not trying to open a can of worms here; but just point out this issue. If the combination of only viewing one page at a time on the iPad; along with the indentation formatting issue lead to confusion with one person tonight (with a mundane checklist being read with brakes set); I'm sure it could happen again with other checklists.
The formatting of a ferry flight preflight checklist on their iPad EFB led to confusion regarding the arming of cabin doors.