Work-Centered Interface Technology

The mismatch between worker needs and information systems design and performance has long been noted, and has given rise to a long body of research on ways to factor the user more explicitly into the interface and system design process. Active interfacesthat act as infomediaries between underlying systems and their users, offer the most comprehensive solution to this usability problem, but also pose the greatest technological challenge. The proposed research team at CHI Systems has evolved, through aseries of recent applications, a novel work-centered active interface reference architecture, called the Work-centered Infomediary Layer (WIL) architecture. This proposal seeks to create a WIL Application Toolkit (WAT) -- a set of software tools tosupport and streamline the process of creating WIL interfaces. Phase I develops a WAT concept of operation and architecture, and integrates these via a storyboard prototype . Phase I also defines a detailed development plan for a full-scale Phase IIsystem, assesses the benefits and commercial potential of WAT, and identifies specific candidate Air Force C2 domains on which a full-scale Phase II WAT will be tested and applied.The commercial value of WAT is derived from its use to develop Work-centeredInfomediary Layer (WIL) applications to various domains in commercial sector, such as aerospace, network management, call center operations, and medicine. WAT can be commercialized as vehicle for consulting/system integration efforts to develop customWIL applications, as well as sold directly to development and end-user organizations as an active interface construction tool.