The effects of variations in inter-modal human-computer interface designs on accuracy, timeliness, and situational awareness of users

The domain of emergency response command and control requires accurate and up-to-date models in order to support resource assignment decision-making. Furthermore, the division of responsibilities in some emergency operations centers requires that the models of the environment must be built within a technology-based data system simultaneously as situational awareness is sought by the various human users of the system. The combination of these efforts can become especially trying at times where messages arrive at an increased pace -- which coincide with times where quality decision-making becomes more crucial. This investigation evaluates the utility of three inter-modal user interface variants for supporting the interpretation of audio messages and for sustaining situational awareness. Human-subject experimental results indicate that subtle changes in user interface composition can have significant impacts on the performances of users in respects to their interpretation speed, accuracy, and situational awareness. This research is inspired by the operations of emergency response command and control centers as environmental complexity increases through atypical levels. The term "inter-modal" refers to the receipt of messages describing changes in the environment in an audio format, which must be interpreted and refined by users in order to be entered into a digital database via a traditional computer keyboard-video-mouse interface.