User‐Centered Design in a Large‐Scale Naval Ship Design Program: Usability Testing of Complex Military Systems—DDG 1000

The US Navy is currently developing a new class of surface combatant ships referred to as DDG 1000. Unlike past ship designs, DDG 1000 is explicitly focused on the execution of a user-centered approach—one that captures the requirements, capabilities, and limitations of sailors expected to operate the ship. Additionally, DDG 1000 presents a number of significant human factors and challenges related to its greatly reduced crew size (compared with similar legacy ships) and high reliance on automated systems. Usability testing and usability assessments (UT and UAs) for the purpose of validation of human systems integration (HSI) principles, and the validation of the DDG 1000 Sailor Systems Specification (S3), play a key role in the DDG 1000 Human-Centered Design (HCD). Through the use of summative and formative design analysis and design verification events, UT/UA is critical in identifying and rectifying issues early in the design process, and verifying system functionality later in the design process. For the DDG 1000 program, the Human Systems Integration—Design Verification Integrated Product Team (HSI-DV-IPT) has also combined its efforts with both the DDG 1000 Safety and Training Cross Product Teams to realize the economies of scale associated with conducting these tests to obtain data for the needs of all three HCD disciplines. Through the course of the DDG 1000 detailed design phase, UTs and UAs have become a defined procedural process, which is governed by both the DDG 1000 Human Systems Integration Plan and as an extension of the total testing plan for the DDG 1000 ship. Almost all DDG 1000 HSI-DV-IPT evolutions combine the efforts of system engineering and design teams with HSI engineers and fleet users to ensure that the combined test output product has received a “cut” from the entire chain of influence from concept to end user. To date, over 30 user interaction and test events employing 1,100 users have been conducted to verify the utility of aspects of the DDG 1000 design, from the most sophisticated to the most mundane systems and processes. In addition, a series of tools that includes 3D visualization aids for modeling and simulation, and weighted assessment systems like NASA-TLX have been included in the DDG 1000 HSI test engineers' tool bag to provide the best of breed solutions to HCD-oriented testing. The test results obtained to date provided valuable insight into the validity of the DDG 1000 HCD and provided feedback that led to optimization of both crew and ship as its HCD objectives intended, in addition to providing cost-effective and timely feedback into the DDG 1000 design.