Evaluation of Computer-Based Progress Indicators in the Missile Launch Control Center

Abstract

Missile crew members are subject to certain inefficiencies in the daily operations of maintaining a missile on strategic alert. A computer-based display of procedural information offers several features that can assist a missile crew member. One of these features is the capability to provide progress information (i.e., feedback) to the operator during checklist execution. An experiment was conducted to examine differences between experts and non-experts in three computer-based formats with respect to the current paper-based system. The computer-based formats varied as to the type of feedback provided to the operators. The results indicated that experts responded faster and more accurately than non-experts. Computer-based checklists allowed experts and non-experts to substantially reduce their error rates compared to the paper-based system. User-initiated scrolling time for the computer-based formats had no impact on overall performance.

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