All at Sea with User Interfaces: From Evolutionary to Ecological Design for Submarine Combat Systems

Abstract The quickening pace of technological advancement will require submarine command teams of the future to process greater volumes of data, potentially with fewer operators. User interfaces (UIs) have evolved to meet current requirements, but this iterative process has propagated legacy design paradigms that may be unsuitable for future system specifications. To understand where improvements may be made, a review of current submarine control room operation is presented, using a sociotechnical systems approach. The social (command team: work, structure, and communication) and technical (combat systems) components are presented for context. An emphasis is placed on Sonar and Target Motion Analysis due to their prevalence within the control room. It was found that current UIs place increased cognitive requirements on operators due to the complexity and quantity of information presented. It is proposed that adopting an Ecological Interface Design (EID) approach could reduce such issues, facilitating effective resource allocation to manage increased data volumes. EID has been demonstrated to be effective across many domains, however, its exploitation in submarine control rooms is limited. Advances in modern submarine combat systems have promoted greater flexibility, providing an opportunity to utilise contemporary design philosophies for designing intuitive interfaces to maintain effective control room performance.