Work-centered support development methodology in tactical aviation

One of the most common "traditional" approaches to user interface design tends to focus primarily on the functional capabilities of the system to be used, and on ensuring that "appropriate" user interfaces for those specific functions are developed. A different approach, Work Centered Support Systems (WCSS) design, seeks to develop decision and performance support systems that focus on defining and organizing the interface in terms of the user's work task needs. Work-centered design results in an interface design more direclty related to the user's work, providing support that is context sensitive, adaptable, flexible (i.e., intelligent), and organized to match the way users work. A general reference model, called the Work-centered Infomediary Layers (WIL) with an associated support system design approach, and a development support toolkit known as the WIL Application Toolkit (WAT) have been eveloped by examining a set of related existing WCSS applications. The WIL reference model consists of a set o abstracted broadly-applicable work support capabilities to help system designers more directly support users' work-centered needs. The WIL design methodology contains a set of well-defined steps that lead to specification of work-centered support interface features specialized for the users' work context. WAT provides sets of functions to ease the development of WIL applications. This article presents a case study of the design approach used to develop the Aircrew Decision Support System (ADSS) developed for a future tactical cockpit, and examines how the WIL approach to work support application development could be used to more efficiently develop a WCSS like ADSS. ADSS provides three levels of integrated aircrew and aircraft support: optimizing aircrew mission performance; preventing problems from occurring, if possible;