Jeffrey Wampler

Designing Collaborative Automated Planners for Agile Adaptation to Dynamic Change

A common characteristic of domains that require planning for allocation of scarce resources is the need to dynamically revise the plan as new requirements emerge and priorities change. We describe a prototype decision support system for planning and scheduling airlift that we developed for a military transport organization that enables agile plan adaptation as movement requirements, available airlift assets, and priorities change. The collaborative automated scheduler includes visualizations to foster improved situation awareness of available airlift assets versus total demand on those assets; mechanisms to enable users to communicate informal priorities and changes to those priorities; and mechanisms that enable users to explore alternative scheduling options in response to changes in movement requirements, priorities and available assets. A formal user evaluation study that included 12 participants representing three different organizational groups involved in transportation planning provided evidence that the prototype improves the ability to capture and communicate movement priorities, rapidly reallocate airlift assets to accommodate changes, and communicate/collaborate across organizational boundaries in managing airlift demand versus capacity.

Work-Centered Design and Evaluation of a C2 Visualization Aid

Command and Control (C2) operators increasingly need to assimilate large amounts of near-real time data distributed across multiple sources to identify, interpret, and mentally fuse the information necessary to accomplish their work. We have been developing and applying work-centered design and evaluation methodologies to design advanced visualization and support tools intended to more effectively support C2 cognitive and collaborative work. The paper reports the results of a work-centered evaluation assessing the usability and usefulness of an innovative work-centered visualization aid (a graphic mission timeline display) we developed to support mission replanning during execution in a C2 airlift service. The evaluation compared performance with the work-centered visualization to performance using the existing information technology system. The work-centered visualization produced statistically significant improvement in task completion time, errors, workload and situation awareness. The results point to the value of taking a work-centered analysis and design approach.

Techniques for Effective Collaborative Automation for Air Mission Replanning

We describe the most recent work-centered design for a military airlift organization. Earlier design cycles produced a set of coordinated visualizations to support synchronized air mission replanning. In this phase of the program automated planning support was incorporated to help C2 staff solve complex constraint problems across multiple missions and airfields. We describe our efforts at designing a replanning tool to work in collaboration with the human operator on complex replanning problems. A prototype was developed and used in an empirical evaluation comparing target user performance on complex constraint problems using either the visualizations alone or the visualizations with embedded automated support (collaborative planner). The collaborative planner significantly improved the speed and quality of dynamic replanning solutions. Post-test questionnaire ratings indicated users trusted the support provided by the automated aid. Design principles for effective collaborative automation are discussed.

Using Work-Centered Specifications to Integrate Cognitive Requirements into Software Development

As Cognitive Engineering (CE) becomes mainstream, methods are needed to better integrate the unique cognitive requirements of the target users of a Human Computer Interface (HCI) into software development requirements and testing. This paper discusses a preliminary work-centered specification describing the key cognitive HCI elements of a complex work system that enhance situation awareness (SA) and decision making. The specification provides traceability from the cognitive requirements obtained during knowledge acquisition to specific display elements in the final design. This specification approach can be applied to any CE methodology. We are applying it to a working prototype currently being integrated into an operational system. We have elicited feedback from developers of the operational system regarding the content and usefulness of the specification as it applies to their software development processes. This paper highlights critical aspects of our inaugural work-centered specification.

Envisioning Evolvable Work-Centered Support Systems: Empowering Users to Adapt Their Systems to Changing World Demands

Work-Centered Support Systems (WCSS) provide visualizations that reveal domain constraints and affordances based on software agent technology to support cognitive and collaborative work. Here we argue for a need to incorporate facilities that enable users to adapt these systems to the changing requirements of work—–evolvable work-centered support systems. We recently developed a WCSS for weather forecasting and monitoring in an airlift organization that is currently used in their operations center. As part of the development process we conducted field observations both prior and subsequent to system introduction. A striking finding was the constant changes that operations personnel faced (changes in goals and priorities; changes in scale of operations; changes in team roles and structure; changes in information sources and systems). We describe the changes in workplace demands that we observed and the modifications we needed to make to the WCSS in response. Our findings are presented as a case study to illustrate the challenges confronted in designing a WCSS to support a constantly changing environment. For todays fielded systems, making changes that are responsive to users changing requirements in a timely manner is seldom possible.

Beyond Levels of Automation: Developing More Detailed Guidance for Human Automation Interaction Design

There is growing recognition of a need to go beyond levels of automation frameworks to provide more detailed guidance for design of effective human automation interaction (HAI). Here we present some design questions that are important for designers of HAI to address as they develop the requirements for the software architecture and user interfaces for automated aids. This set of guiding questions has grown out of our experience in developing a series of successful collaborative automation systems for airlift planning and scheduling. We illustrate through examples how answers to these high-level questions helped inform the HAI design decisions we confronted. The set of questions are offered in an attempt to broaden the discussion of how best to provide guidance to system developers confronted with HAI design challenges.

The Role of Operationally Distinct Options in Supporting Joint Human-Automation Planning

We describe a prototype cognitive work aid for airlift mission allocation and scheduling. A key design challenge was how to generate and visualize multiple operationally distinct options to broaden the set of alternative plans that Mission Planners consider, increasing overall efficiency and effectiveness of the mission planning organization. We first describe the distributed nature of the mission planning domain, where key considerations arise across different organizational boundaries, come in over time and dynamically change. We describe techniques we developed for generating and displaying multiple operationally distinct mission planning solutions, to facilitate contingency planning and collaboration across organizatinal boundaries. This work is part of a longer term program to develop and demonstrate concrete techniques for more effective joint cognitive systems.