Techniques for building excellent Operator Machine Interfaces (OMI)

Establishing a process to continually improve understanding of operator requirements -the why as well as the how-is key to developing an optimal Operator-Machine Interface (OMI) for a large program. The P-8A program is one example of a complex software development, with over 2 million lines of code and a unique and complex OMI. The OMI itself is used as a tool for achieving, and is designed in parallel with understanding end goals, operator decision making chains, and thought processes. The OMI can be designed to support and anticipate information needs, and alert operators to unusual occurrences. Operator actions and decision making techniques can be discovered by using expert operators and capturing their knowledge through the use of multiple tools to identify the problem set: storytelling, decision mapping, is/is not matrices, etc. When a solution set has been identified and agreed to by the customer, resources allocated, and schedule set, a standard process captures and prioritizes further changes, identifies their impact, and decides on implementation. Documents describing design and processes and a Design Description Document describing the current version of the OMI are made accessible to stakeholders at all times. "What\´s important is not that we can conceive the idea, but that when we actually test it on people you discover it doesn\´t work... your intuition is wrong." -Daniel M. Russell (IBM Almaden / Xerox PARC).