Stairway to Mars
Sprint 9: Design Iterations and Simulations
“Mars is there, waiting to be reached.” — Buzz Aldrin
As we dive into the last month of our capstone project, our team has been hard at work transforming our ideas into concrete artifacts. From high-fidelity prototypes, a coded chat interface, and the launch of our EVA simulation… we have a lot to share!
Iterating on a Design 🖍️
In the last sprint, our team explored how to organize messages to match our users’ mental model of asynchronous communication. Through card sorting, we learned that participants tended to organize messages to help them determine what action they should take. To group messages by action, we sketched how users might create chat threads from tasks on the timeline. We also determined that a split-screen view of the timeline and chat could help users associate messages with the tasks they have planned throughout their day. We put these concepts to the test in our prototype this sprint.
Our Design
Here are some other key features of our most recent design:
- Centerline: In the center of the chat pane is a column of message timestamps. This brings time information to the forefront of the chat interface, making it more simple to resolve any time math problems. We’re also sorting messages by received time, so crew and Mission Control can view the same ordering of messages to avoid confusion.
- The Ether: At the bottom of the chat pane is a section for messages in transit. This part of the interface was nicknamed “the ether” by multiple research participants. It clearly distinguishes which messages have and have not been delivered yet.
- Trace: Asynchronous communication can lead to misunderstandings due to conflicting messages. To solve this problem, we designed a feature that allows users to “trace” when their messages were sent in the chat (seen below in yellow).
Usability Test Findings
After running eight usability tests this sprint, we put together a list of possible improvements to take our design to the next level.
- Visual design refinement: There were some elements of our chat interface that were difficult for participants to understand due to visual design. One issue was that the proximity of certain icons and timestamps made it hard for users to determine what information corresponded to what message. Overall, people found that our design would be more understandable if it was less cluttered.
- Trace feature improvements: Participants found it useful to visualize when a message was sent. However, the trace feature lacked feedforward and intuitiveness.
- Additional features: There is still a need for other major features in our chat interface. Many participants, especially SMEs, expressed wanting high-priority messages, the ability to extract to-dos from conversations, and message reminders. We plan to add more of these features to our design in the upcoming sprint.
Coded Chat Interface 🖥️
Along with our prototyping efforts, we’ve also been working tirelessly to create a coded chat interface. This functional chat is a crucial part of our simulated mission experiments because it enables us to send messages with a time delay. The coded version of our design contains a subset of features that already exist in our Figma prototype such as timestamps, countdowns, and multiple chat threads. We plan to add more features as necessary, but right now, we’re focusing on implementing important, highly interactive features that we can’t easily validate in usability tests.
Simulated Mission Launch 📸
In the spring, we used a series of experiments called “simulated missions” to explore the interesting communication problems that occur during a time-delayed EVA. We created a very simple analog to this scenario by designing a team photo scavenger hunt. Participants are split into two groups — Mission Control and crew. Crew needs to take photos to earn points while MCC assigns points to the photos. Teams need to accumulate a certain amount of points to win.
This summer, we decided to modify our simulated mission experiment to be more evaluative than generative. We wanted it to serve as our ORT and help us determine whether key aspects of our design improves situational awareness in an EVA-like scenario. To do this, we compiled a set of metrics that measures participants’ situational awareness during the simulation. This experiment also works in tandem with our usability tests by validating features that need to be tested in context and over time. We ran three pilots of our simulated missions this sprint with more to come.
Next Steps 👟
In the coming sprint, we will continue iterating on our Figma prototype, usability testing, developing our coded chat interface, and running simulated missions. We also plan to wrap up our favorite unused ideas into a design roadmap for the Playbook team at NASA. Lastly, we will get to work on our final deliverables. We’re so proud of the progress we’ve made so far, and we’re excited to keep sharing our work!
Chronos Communication
Our simulated missions give us a much-needed chance to observe asynchronous task execution. What we didn’t expect was how entertaining it is to watch participants do their thing! We get a little peek into their neighborhoods and all the weird and interesting things they find around them.
As we pack our schedules with capstone work, it’s important to take some time off! We have a couple of games lined up for a future game night, like Among Us, Mario Party, and Dig.
Signing off for now,
Chronos
Chronos Acronym Dictionary
AI: Artificial Intelligence
ARC: Ames Research Center
BASALT: One of NASA’s analog mission project to design and develop elements of future missions that could send humans to conduct science and exploration on Mars
CAPCOM: Capsule Communicator
CCTV: Closed Circuit Television
CDMS: Command & Data Management Systems Officer
CDR: Commander
CDS: Central Data System
DCS: Display & Control Monitor
ESA: European Space Agency
EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity
F/C: Flight Controller
FD: Flight Director
HERA: Human Exploration Research Analog
IMF: In Flight Maintenance
INCO: Instrumentation & Communications Officer
IVA: Intra-Vehicular Activity
JSC: Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
KSC: John F. Kennedy Space Center
MCC: Mission Control Center
MD: Mission Director
MS: Mission Specialist
MSCI: Mission Scientist
NEEMO: NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation
ORT: Operational Readiness Test
SA: Situational Awareness
SME: Subject Matter Experts
Opinions expressed are solely our own and do not represent the views or opinions of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
