CONCEIVE: Concept for the Integrated Visualization of Effects

CONCEIVE applies Adaptable Interfaces and Ecological Interface Design techniques to improve situational awareness of assets in cyber space in order to improve operations in Air Operations Centers.

CONCEIVE applies Adaptable Interfaces and Ecological Interface Design techniques to improve situational awareness of assets in cyber space in order to improve operations in Air Operations Centers. CONCEIVE is a US Air Force sponsored SBIR, contract number FA8650-09-M-6974, program manager Denise Aleva.

Adaptable Interfaces in contrast to adaptive interfaces, adaptable interfaces leave the control of adaptation to the user. Of course, doing this without incurring added workload is a challenge, but recent innovative approaches suggest a way ahead. We use many of the techniques from adaptive interface design (including workload and context sensitivity and task tracking) to prune lists of possible alternatives, but leave final decisions to the user. For the user to make intelligent decisions, however, s/he needs to be well-informed about current states and potential courses of action. Keeping the user informed requires interfaces to provide more context and status information more consistently, and present more explanatory information about the consequences of alternate decisions. Unfortunately, these increased information requirements are often at odds with attempts to limit user workload.

Ecological Interface Design (EID) provides a way out of this dilemma. The goal of EID is to present information in a way that makes maximal use of human perceptual capabilities. EID does this by shifting information about relationships and capabilities away from cognitive processing and into perceptual processing. Instead of having to reason over information to understand the range of possibilities and their pros and cons, clever graphical or acoustic presentations convey all of that literally “at a glance” to take advantage of human perceptual, rather than cognitive processing. CONCEIVE will provide this to operators in the air operations domain.