FORT EUSTIS, Va. -- An Army organization is working to help Soldiers concentrate on accomplishing their missions rather than focusing on buttonology.
Buttonology describes Soldiers' difficulties learning how to press the right buttons to operate systems ranging from weapons to communications. The term buttonology was coined by the organization trying to solve those problems: the Training Support Analysis and Integration Division.
TSAID's answer to buttonology is trainability.
"Trainability simplifies system design so Soldiers can easily learn and retain the knowledge to effectively operate systems," said Dr. Adria Markowski, an operations research analyst at TSAID. TSAID is part of the Army Training Support Center, a subordinate organization of the Combined Arms Center -- Training (CAC-T), Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Systems that are difficult to learn and operate increase training costs and make a Soldier's job -- already stressful -- even more challenging.
TSAID Director Mark Mueller said, "We cannot continue to field complex systems that require near constant refresher training or complex graphical training aids to sustain Soldier competence to employ and maintain the system. Instead, we need to build a simple system up-front that then frees the commander and unit leaders to focus on the more complex task of collective training."
To analyze trainability issues, TSAID teamed with other Army organizations and studied a radio system similar to one the Army uses to communicate tactical information. The analysis was a proof of principle to validate the use of trainability criteria to improve system design and make systems easier to learn, use and maintain.
After studying the radio gear, they suggested improvements by:
• Reducing the number of steps needed to complete a task, including shrinking a five-step task to a one-click function.
• Adding a drop down menu to walk users through each step of a process rather than making Soldiers memorize a number of steps.
Communications systems experts estimated these suggestions and others would cut training time for system operators to 12 hours from 19.5 hours and save $6.6 million during new equipment fielding. In addition, the changes would save 200,000 hours of training time each year at Army schoolhouses.
The other organizations that participated in the project included the Army Research Laboratory, Army Research Institute, Army Capabilities Integration Center, Army Signal Center of Excellence, and Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical.
TSAID aims to infuse trainability into the design of future Army systems to cut training costs and make Soldiers' jobs easier. A team is studying a universal hand controller for unmanned vehicles and other Army robotics, and potential trainability improvements to a light tank.
CAC-T manages Army training support and training development to train and educate versatile units, and develop agile and adaptive leaders. Its website is http://usacac.army.mil/organizations/cact. You can follow CAC-T on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/usacactraining and Twitter at: https://twitter.com/usacactraining
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