Development of a Battlefield Management System: How to Use the User
Abstract
The Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) is currently developing a demonstrator Battlefield Management System (BMS), which will support soldiers by displaying and distributing the available C2 information. Throughout the entire development of the BMS, the future military users play a very important role. There is frequent contact between users and developers and new versions of the BMS are presented to and evaluated by users every few months. The development consists of several cycles, while users are involved in nearly every step in each cycle. This leads to commitment of the user, because he notices that his comments are taken seriously and are usually implemented in the next version of the BMS. This user-centered approach has worked very well so far for both developers and military users. Several evaluations, in different settings and environments, have been conducted over the past two and a half years. This paper describes two of them in more detail, and also covers the user-centered approach that was taken in the development of the BMS. The paper explains the approach that was chosen by the RNLA, and discusses the advantages of this approach, as opposed to situations where users are not involved in the development of C2 systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA467956
Entities
People
- Merel Vertegaal