SHAPING ARMY ACQUISITION
will evolve through iterative testing with users, often referred to as developmental operations (DevOps). See Figure 1, Page 26.
Create multidisciplinary, user-focused, collaborative teams.
Assembling multidisciplinary, collaborative teams whose members—developers, designers, engineers, domain subject matter experts, logistics, training, safety, cyber and testers— attend at least one Soldier touch-point event enables each team member to approach design and development with the user’s context in mind. Most developers have never met a user and have no concept of the environments in which they work. Te insights and empathy gained through immersion in a user’s expe- rience will create a common bond within the team and inspire all to stay focused on users and their needs even under the crunch of rapid development cycles.
Ensure development of a user interface style guide for use by all agile teams.
A style guide contains a set of design guidelines that specifies visual presentation of content, interactive elements and how they behave (buttons, form fields, dialog boxes, menus, navigation, etc.). See Figure 2, Page 27.
Ideally, a style guide should include reusable code snippets for front-end design elements to increase adoption by separate small Agile teams and should be in place before the start of coding. Adhering to the guide will ensure a consistent look and feel across feature sets, enabling users to transfer knowledge gained from using one feature set to another. Users can focus on performing a task rather than having to learn how the system works every time they use another one of its features. During internal vendor test- ing, screen layouts and interactive elements should be compared against the style guide to ensure compliance. Doing so will reduce the backlog created by identification of design inconsistencies during usability testing.
Refine the design with user feedback early and often.
Te Soldier-centered design team needs to work one step ahead of a sprint to collect user feedback, document the design and
SOLDIER-CENTERED FROM THE START
Soldier-centered design is so tightly woven into the fabric of the Precision Fires Dismounted program office that, when it came time to request authorization from the milestone-decision authority to proceed with limited deployment, it seemed only natural to invite Soldiers to the meeting. Forward observers from 1-320th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) had participated in user juries and usability testing. The Program Executive Offi- cer for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical Brig. Gen. Robert M. Collins, asked them to weigh-in on the go or no-go decision.
They explained that, because the program office and developers listened to them and implemented the changes they requested, the system was much improved and they were looking forward to using it—“the earlier the better.” One Soldier claimed that, “it is 20 times better than the original PF-D.” Whether it is 20 times better is difficult to measure, however, usability test results have demonstrated a 40 percent increase in the ability of Soldiers to accomplish critical tasks on the first attempt—a measure of the intuitive- ness of the user interface.
A 29-point increase in its mean score on the indus- try-standard System Usability Scale brought the modernized system’s score 20 points above what is considered average and within the top 10 percent of scores for all commercial products tested. Products with scores this high are more likely to be recom- mended to a friend. Anecdotal evidence provided by one Soldier supporting this assertion was provided by one usability test participant who explained, “I was talking with some of the Special Ops JTACs [Joint Termi- nal Attack Controllers] I work with about this, and they thought it would be really cool to use because Call for Fire is something that we require them to do.” To expand on Kevin Costner’s famous line from “Field of Dreams,” If you build it right, they will come. The only way to build it right is to include Soldiers in the process.
Delivering real-world, operational capability enhancements relies on one fundamental principle: listening to users.
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