A System to Enhance Team Decision-Making Peformance

In complex human-machine systems such as military command and control (C2), corporatestrategic planning, air traffic control, and computer-supported collaborative work, the scope and complexity of the task often require that the decision-making function be distributed over several humans organized in distributed or collocated teams. For this project, we propose to enhance a proven research tool, the Distributed Dynamic Decision-making (DDD) paradigm, to study the dual effects of external task factors and support interventions that affect the team performance. These interventions will include decision aids, enhanced team procedures, and shared information displays, designed to enhance the resource allocation function in a team comprised of members with different expertise, knowledge, and skills. Rather than designing a computer-based task from scratch, the APTIMA, Inc. team proposes to modify the DDD-based task they have developed and tested over the last ten years in order to meet the Air Force specifications, and focus most of the Phase I effort in the study of those team interventions which have a maximum potential to affect team performance. A significant portion of our initial effort will be devoted to design and implement computer-based team measures that reflect both behavior and cognition at the individual and team levels.