Methodological issues in evaluating prototype command and control systems

Summary form only given. Command and control environments tend to change relatively slowly because of the high cost involved in their development. Part of the difficulty with designing command and control environments is the relatively weak analysis of the total socio-technical system and there is a need for the development of an appropriate methodology for this highly complex design problem. New systems for command and control may result in changes to the task, the technology used and the team structure, simultaneously. To be able to develop a new methodology for examining team-oriented command and control it is proposed that changes in expertise are examined when novices are exposed to a new task, system and team. This paper reports the progress on study which uses qualitative and quantitative methods to describe changes in the command and control performance.