Document

Author
Sophie M. Hallam, Neville A. Stanton, Aaron P. J. Roberts, Kiome A. Pope & Daniel Fay
Abstract
The Command Team Experimental Test-Bed (ComTET) project aims to investigate the operation of contemporary and future submarine control rooms. Previous ComTET research has found that facilitating non-verbal communication between Sonar Operators (SOPS) and Target Motion Analysts (TMA) helped reduce a communications bottleneck and better manage their workload. The present study explores workload in a novel circular control room configuration which enables non-verbal communication between all operators. Participants completed low and high demand versions of Return to Periscope Depth (RTPD), In Shore Operations (INSO) and Dived Tracking (DT), six scenarios in total. After each scenario was completed the NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) was filled out. The present work looks at a subset of four teams from each configuration as a preliminary analysis to provide insight into the direction of trends in the data. Results show that perceived workload is affected by the configuration, with the circle layout producing slightly greater overall workload (except for DT and INSO high demand).