A Selective Callup System for Managing Tactical Information on Graphic Displays

The cluttered appearance of graphic tactical displays makes the rapid extraction and comprehension of information difficult. The objective of the present research was to design, demonstrate, and evaluate a selective callup symbolic display system to support tactical decisionmaking. Marine Corps officers who provided the better solution to key tactical problems were found to use the selective callup option more systematically than those who performed poorly. The systematic selection sequences were used to model the cognitive processes employed by the officers who preformed well. From these sequences, initial procedural guidelines were derived for generating displays that would be most useful toward answering key tactical questions. Officer opinions uniformly favored the selective callup option.