Support Environment for Automatic Context-switching User Experience

In the future, Navy personnel will be expected to perform a variety of different tasks and missions in a highly linked, collaborative environment subject to frequent alerts and interruptions. This situation will be operable for all newer class surface ships, which have an expanded range of missions within the context of an open system architecture. One major challenge is insuring that the human-technology interfaces for these systems eliminate as much as possible the heavy performance cost of context switching which occurs when personnel attend to different missions or tasks or respond to alerts and warnings. In Phase I, Infoscitex designed the Support Environment for Automatic Context-switching User Experience, or SEACUE, a tool to help automate the selection and display of task-relevant context for human-system interfaces. The key to the approach is a deep understanding of both the nature of context in user interface design for Navy applications and of the domain in which the user interfaces must operate. In Phase II, SEACUE will be fully implemented as a functional prototype and tested within the USW DSS application environment. Ultimately, this tool will produce highly effective interfaces that minimize the disruptive effects of context switching across Navy applications.