Scientific and graphic design foundations for C2

Whether designing from scratch or modifying an existing command and control (C2) platform one should always take into account the vast amount of background research that has been performed in both the psychological as well as the graphical design literature. However, surveying this vast literature can be daunting as well as overwhelming if one’s background is not in the applied science (e.g., psychology). We will give a review of the most relevant issues in the literature as well as how the findings may be applied. For example, for graphical design we discuss the work or authors such as Tufte, Ware and Healy and how their approaches help one to better design graphical interfaces. Likewise, a review of the psychological literature will discusses issues such as attentional capacity issues (e.g., attentional capture, change blindness) and memory issues (short versus long term versus working memory) among others. We end by discussing a proposed method for taking into account and applying these principal for the design of an optimal C2 system.