A Graphical Player Interface to the Theater War Exercise

Abstract

The Theater War Exercise (TWX) is a two sided, theater level, computer assisted, air power employment decision making exercise. The primary purpose of the exercise is to give senior military officers a feel for the factors involved with high level decision-making in an air/land conventional warfare situation. This thesis investigates the feasibility of replacing the recently developed graphical output display and the separate form-based input interface with one combined interface. The result allows the players to make their inputs directly through the graphics display. The new interface is easy to use and learn, reducing distractions from the primary purpose of the exercise. The interface prototype was developed using a combined methodology that included features from the Classic Life Cycle Methodology, Iterative Design Methodology, and Prototyping. The prototype was designed to fit within the framework of the output display, incorporating the full functionality of the input interface while not degrading the functionality of the output display. Full system installation was delayed until the ORACLE database was loaded onto the SUN workstations. Additional benefits derived from this effort were insights into computer interaction and human factors, and the evaluation of graphic toolkits. Theses.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1989
Accession Number
ADA215669

Entities

People

  • Peter J. Gordon

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computer Program Documentation
  • Computer Program Reliability
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Database Management Systems
  • Human-Machine Interfaces
  • Mainframe Computers
  • Operating Systems
  • Relational Database Management Systems
  • Software Development
  • Software Testing
  • Students
  • User Interface
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies