Interface Design for Mobile Army Commanders

Abstract

The progress in developing and evaluating a prototype interface for mobile, forward-positioned Army commanders is reported. This interface currently includes novel representations of friendly and enemy combat resources and control mechanisms to re-focus granularity of attention. Army domain experts contributed substantially to design and evaluation activities: existing and proposed interfaces were reviewed, iterative design feedback was provided, a simulated combat scenario was designed, and three empirical evaluations have been performed with Army officers as participants. The evaluations have compared the RAPTOR interface with a simulated version of the Army's current computerized interface (FBCB2); the RAPTOR interface has generally produced better performance. The next step is to incorporate graphical representations of plans into the interface. These representations will include information regarding time, space, objectives, and resources. The design goal is to facilitate comparisons between pre-planned objectives for the engagement and the actual progress that is being made. Ultimately these graphical representations should facilitate a commander's capability to determine when current progress toward goals and resource expenditures have deviated (either positively or negatively) from plan.