Analysis of Human-Computer Interaction in the Expeditionary Warfare Decision Support System (EDSS)

Abstract

Abstract : The Expeditionary Warfare Decision Support System (EDSS) is an Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored system designed to improve the planning of expeditionary operations. ONR requested that the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington (APL-UW) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) investigate the human-computer interaction (HCI) components of EDSS. Additionally, APL-UW and NRL were tasked to provide user interface recommendations to the EDSS developers. To do this the HCI team followed a user-centered design (UCD) approach and studied EDSS users and their tasks, which resulted in an in-depth user task analysis of expeditionary planning. A medium-fidelity interface prototype was created based on the user studies and the principles of UCD. The prototype presented a more streamlined and intuitive order of tasks and improved window organization. The positive feedback from this prototype allowed for a more comprehensive list of user interface recommendations. A majority of these recommendations were incorporated into a follow-on version of EDSS. HCI and UCD have implications for future versions of EDSS and other Navy decision systems, and particularly for Net Centric Warfare.