Designing human computer interfaces for command and control environments

This paper will introduce the human factors command and control test bed developed at Brunei University. The system was developed to facilitate experiments into command and control within a military context. The purpose of the system is to support experimentation, it is not intended to represent a product that could be used in the field by the MoD. The test bed developed represents a controlled environment allowing the manipulation of individual variables. The manipulation of these variables allows researchers to address fundamental human factors questions emerging from the transition form an analogue paper based planning process to a digital network enabled process. Areas of particular interest for this system include collaborative working, distributed command centres, the flow of information as well as changes to the command hierarchy. The system consists of a number of commercial off the shelf products synthesised by a bespoke planning application.