Peering Under the Hull: Enhanced Decision Making via an Augmented Environment

Daily operation and management of complex systems typically include multiple working sessions during which a team presents a set of information and discusses issues relevant to their decision making. A complex set of operational technology (OT) networks installed onboard a Navy ship is an example of such a system. A crew’s ability to effectively communicate OT networks status to the ship commander, visualize, and discuss the options available in a given situation, has a significant impact on mission success. While the complexity of contemporary OT networks has dramatically increased, visualization tools have witnessed little improvement over several decades—they include sets of two-dimensional blueprints that are inherently hard to understand and conceptualize as three-dimensional (3D) information. To address this problem, we designed and implemented an augmented reality (AR) system that allowed a small team to visualize a 3D model of the ship with details of its computer networks. We recruited 30 individuals familiar with network management tasks central to our study and examined the usability of the tool on a set of real-world scenarios focused on network management. Analysis of objective and subjective data suggested that there was a general agreement among the participants that AR portrayal of the network was very supportive of their understanding of the physical-to-logical relationship within the network and that it fostered constructive collaboration among the team members. The reported levels of discomfort associated with oculomotor symptoms made the highest contribution to the total Simulator Sickness Questionnaire score; we believe that those symptoms should be given more attention in future studies with AR setups. The results provided in this empirical study offer early insights into the benefits and challenges of AR approaches applied to the decision making of small teams in high stakes scenarios and real-world situations.