Concept of Operations Storyboarding Tool

S&K Technologies proposes to develop a storyboard tool to assist with the generation, verification, and refinement of storyboard information and its subsequent translation into model data for systems analysis and design tools. The most important contribution is an improved communication of the concept of operation between prospective customers and system developers. It addresses the difficulty of communicating highly technical information among specialized engineering groups so that the concept of operations illustrated by the storyboard accommodates the consideration of context of use, user task performance, effective application of new technologies, safety, and reliability. This difficulty is especially pronounced when the user's tasks are unusual (space operations) and the technology to support the task is novel (autonomous software with which humans interact and monitor). Communication is enhanced by focusing on the common language of storyboard information. The storyboard tool will help authors manage versions of storyboards to track alternate approaches for human task support and to maintain libraries of storyboards from previous systems. After assisting with the creation of storyboards and refining them in concurrent engineering sessions, the tool will assist in translating the storyboard information into data forms importable by analysis tools used by NASA systems engineers.