Participatory Design Methods for Command and Control Systems

To ensure network-centric and other systems provide relevant capability to the C2 user, effort needs to be expended in understanding the requirements, designing the appropriate solution, developing the capability and implementing for acceptance. The cognitive systems engineering and the software systems engineering communities struggle with the difficulties of understanding a domain and its challenges and then handing research results to designers and developers so that shared understanding of the problem and possible solutions exists. They also struggle with the more frustrating challenge of a developed system being implemented but not enthusiastically embraced by the end-user. Participatory Design (PD) has a goal of engaging researchers, designers, developers, practitioners and end-users in all of the various activities leading to the successful development and implementation of systems. PD is an umbrella methodology which includes studies, theories, conferences and practices (Muller and Kuhn, 1993; Kensing and Blomberg, 1998; Madsen, 1999). This paper will discuss two methods which embrace participatory concepts. The first is Elicitation by Critiquing (EBC) and the second is Value Elicitation. Both techniques provide a way to engage all of the stakeholders at the requirements discovery stage of development, which is the first critical step of system development.