Human Interface Evaluation Methods for Submarine Combat Systems

The most common cause of submarine combat system failures is human error. A prevalent approach is to reduce errors by (a) consulting with domain experts to determine what caused each error, and (b) providing a system upgrade to fix the individual problems that caused each error. The problem with this approach is that the sum of the individual solutions does not necessarily create a better overall system solution. And, presently, there are no tools for evaluating the impact of system upgrades on performance. The objectives for Phase I are to understand the sources of error for a typical submarine combat system operator task (e.g., target tracking), and then to develop a human performance model. In addition to the model, we will address the sources of error using our error remediation techniques and tools. The ultimate goal is to provide products (i.e., tools and processes) that improve system performance, that objectively measure those improvements, and that help incorporate the proven improvements into the fleet.