Usability Testing for Rapid Fielding with Small N s: Lessons Learned during an Army Operational Field Experiment

Abstract

The Army's acquisition process is transforming to meet the needs of a force that must be agile, adaptive, and responsive to asymmetric threats. Advanced capabilities and technologies, which are urgently needed to enable rapid response to evolving military needs, are being developed and pushed out to troops at unprecedented rates. As a result, not all systems have undergone an iterative design process, received usability feedback from their target users, or had design support from human factors engineers to ensure that unit and Soldier considerations have been addressed. Subsequently, these systems may possess characteristics that induce high cognitive workload, fatigue, detectability, or trigger events that lead to fratricide. When human factors engineers encounter a system that has not derived these benefits, they too must become more agile, adaptive, and responsive to ensure that Soldier feedback is collected and that serious issues are identified and resolved before the system makes its way to the battlefield. Lessons learned while participating in advanced technology and experimentation programs include techniques that facilitate working with small Ns, institutional review boards, rapid survey instrument development, and the collection of qualitative feedback as well as the importance of having a “usability tool kit” available to facilitate data collection efforts in an operational field environment.

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