Refining supervisory control capability for target user populations

Abstract

In designing and developing intelligent automation systems, there is often tension between the computational capabilities of the automated system and its usability and understandability. This paper presents a case study in which this tension was manifest and how we attempted to resolve it in a particular application. The application requires intelligent automation in distributed simulation for training. We describe an initial approach to such control, feedback we received from potential users, and a revision to the capability that eliminated some features but that was more acceptable to the user community. This case study may offer some observations and lessons applicable to other domains, especially in situations where penetration of a technology into everyday use is driven by informal user adoption criteria (transparency, trust, perceived usability) alongside formal functional requirements.