Effects of controls and displays on the use of rule-based supervisory control systems

In rule-based supervisory control users direct the automatic operation of a complex decision-support system through the specification, activation, and modification of conditional response rules. This is an important feature of certain naval combat direction systems. Interactions between users and developers involve an iterative process of prototype development and evaluation. This interaction has also motivated a research program aimed at obtaining a better understanding of users´ interactions with these systems. We discuss the background of that program and report on experimental results. Those results indicate, among other things, that direct manipulation control of conditional response parameters can lead to more frequent modification of those parameters in response to changing environmental conditions and result in more effective use of the resulting automatic responses