Reflection

The Challenge

The development of software systems that help decision makers in stressful situations make  timely and accurate decisions have to strike a delicate balance between presenting relevant  information to the operator, while not overwhelming them with too much information. This  challenge is further compounded by the difficulty of predicting the specific use case the operator  is using the system. To build the solution a small team of cognitive scientists, human systems  interface engineers, software engineers were directed to build this software system in a  compressed timeline to support emerging mission requirements. Vice employing traditional  waterfall software development practices, the team elected to employ agile software techniques  and design thinking approaches. Bringing together a multidisciplinary team of experts along with  actual operators/users the team could start to build prototypes of the system and place the  operators in simulations to see how changes to the system interface improved performance and  outcomes.

Tool Employment

The software team employed the rapid prototyping tool (technique 8), to take the ideas and  concepts fleshed out previously and start to shape them into views to validate them in  simulations with the actual operators. Stakeholders then created use cases and scenarios to  see how the prototype could be expanded. This low fidelity approach saved resources by not  employing developers and focused on the desired outcomes. Some developers were on hand  however to ensure the rapid prototypes did not exceed the capacity and capabilities resident in  the technology. As the prototypes were exercised additional downstream stakeholders were on  hand to further validate and experiment on the solution “end to end.”     As discussed in lecture launch lecture, the “what wow’s” phase provides an opportunity to find  out what the user/customer really desires or needs, and will drive them to adopt the tool or  product. In the case of this reflection, we could rapidly experiment with different visualization,  data interactions and other more radical approaches in a low threat creative environment.

Insight

Overall design thinking is a compelling approach to addressing challenging problems that require  more dramatic methods than an incremental evolutionary approach. In the case of the reflection the  ability to employ a creative, multidisciplinary team in a way that focuses on learning and challenging  assumptions. As we face more complex challenges in a more interdependent and competitive world,  design thinking is likely to become increasingly important.

