Human-machine interfaces for future submarine control rooms: Graphical integration of sonar and target motion analysis

Abstract

Submarine control rooms are an advanced product of evolution, but this does not preclude further improvements. Whilst the traditional process of incremental interface improvement has met requirements, an evolutionary design approach has unnecessarily retained older constraints, limiting contemporary designs. Consequently, future operational requirements may exceed a control room’s capacity to perform effectively, despite highly trained operators utilising advanced technology. This thesis explores the utility of Ecological Interface Design (EID) to address the issue, concentrating jointly on the Sonar and Target Motion Analysis (TMA) roles due to their prevalence in the control room. Two stages of CWA (Cognitive Work Analysis), Work Domain Analysis (WDA) and Worker Competencies Analysis (WCA), were completed for both roles to understand their operation, key design aspects, and shortcomings. This revealed actionable design insights, including investigating merging the interfaces. These insights were used to design a combined interface named Graphically Integrated Sonar and TMA (GIST), which is a novel application of EID and the roles (due to their merged application) in the literature. GIST was created using a proposed agile software process designed to help bridge the gap between CWA and EID implementation, adapting prevailing methods to integrate better with contemporary software engineering. Subsequent evaluation of GIST against contemporary Sonar and TMA interfaces in a repeated-measures Human in the Loop study indicated that EID was a suitable design choice for GIST, with statistically significant improvements observed in objective performance, subjective usability, and subjective workload. GIST was also evaluated against a UserCentred Design Mashup interface as part of this study. This comparison revealed that subjective usability, subjective workload, and a tracker assignment (aliasing data) task were better in the Mashup. However, GIST had better solution positioning (where other vessels are in relation to the submarine). It was inferred that each interface had excelled at items linked to its design process (e.g., GIST was better at a task involving the submarine’s environment). Consequently, it was proposed that while the application of EID was beneficial over contemporary designs, a blend of EID and User-Centred Design might yield even better results than individually in future work. By demonstrating the benefit of EID applied to the problem of future submarine control room design, including merging the Sonar and TMA interfaces, and documenting how this could be achieved, it is hoped that this thesis will serve to inspire future change in submarine control room interface design.

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ORCID for Katie Plant: orcid.org/0000-0002-4532-2818

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