overview
UTC Aerospace Systems (now Collins Aerospace) came to the Bentley User Experience Center with a new project to design the interface for the environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) to be used by NASA for deep space missions.
The first phase of this project was working on a touch screen interface that astronauts would interact with to troubleshoot and solve problems related to the four functional units that make up the environmental and life support system. In order to create a successful user experience, we were tasked with creating a single interface that was extensible and would work with those four units.
challenge
During deep space missions astronauts will have a large time delay when communicating with mission control. This delay means that if something goes wrong with the environmental control and life support system, astronauts will need to be able to fix the potentially life-threatening issue themselves with no support from on-the-ground experts. Without experts on hand, the system needs to aid users in identifying any issues and walking them through detailed steps to address and fix the issue. The user also needs to be able to operate independently of the system if they do not agree with the identified cause of issue.
approach
In order to build a better understanding of the users and the interface, we began the project by developing user personas and a journey map. Due to the relationship between UTAS and NASA, we were unable to speak directly with our users, astronauts, during the first phase of the project. As this was not possible, we spent a considerable amount of time researching astronaut biographies, ethnographic studies from space, and the behavioral characteristics that NASA uses when recruiting.
After this first phase was reviewed and signed-off on by project stakeholders familiar with the system and users, we began work on an information architecture and a fault decision tree outlining the various options that an astronaut would have when troubleshooting issues with the system. The goal of this phase was to develop an optimized underlying structure for the system, enabling the user groups to quickly and effectively navigate through the system.
Our final deliverable included 20+ interactive wireframes which represented key screens in the system.