Background

20 papers
4 professors
3 commercial space employees

Generative

22 interviews
3 contextual inquiries

Empathetic

4 playtests
105 diary study participants

Evaluative

8 storyboards
6 validated needs

Through our research, a lot of astronaut needs started to emerge. We tested these needs by creating storyboards and presenting them to astronauts! Here are some examples of our storyboards:

This process worked really well, because astronauts were very honest. They told us when a need was valid, and when something wasn’t our strongest idea.

We arrived at insights by organizing information from interviews and contextual inquiries in multiple affinity maps. Based on our insights we created a model to enable successful troubleshooting in the context of future space missions.

ABCD Model

Best practices
Astronauts need to be nudged to follow best practices in high stress environments.

“Even the most experienced engineers break the rules sometimes.”
- Electrical Engineer

Documentation
Mission control won’t be replaced in the near future. Documentation is necessary to allow MCC to assist.

“In high stress situations, the crew has more situational awareness, and the ground does not provide good judgement.”
- Flight Controller

Based on our insights and a reframing exercise, we crafted a narrowed problem statement:

How might we situate diagnostic tools in a workflow to support astronauts in thinking clearly, rationally, and critically?

To answer our how might statement, we ran 3 user testing sessions with prototypes of increasing fidelity.
We tested our prototypes with 3 astronauts and 7 subject matter experts. In each session, we walked the participant through the prototype, highlighting its various interactions and capabilities.

User testing revealed that astronauts wanted:

Automation
Any technology that can automate routine planning items and take the burden off the astronauts is welcome.

Flexibility
Astronauts want the ability to create non-linear yet connected plans.

Privacy
Astronauts are hesitant to send down half-baked thoughts to mission control and wanted the ability to correct an uninformed message.

The front of the cards contain the card type, card title, time the card was created, and ID of the crew member who created the card.

“This is really what these cards do, they give you a bit of a mental model, both in functional space and time.”
- Astronaut on STS-85

Records more in-depth information about the observation or action. Astronauts are prompted to consider downstream implications of the card and potential times to effect.

“I think what you've done is created a space that's much more multi-sensory, that makes the picture that's being painted much more intuitive and complete than typing it out on a form.”
- NEEMO Lead

TALOS pre-populates the unknown column of each swimlane with a card prompting crew members to consider time to effect (the time until a particular effect is expected to manifest) and near-future impacts.

“It’s like playing chess. Thinking two moves ahead is one thing. Thinking four moves ahead is a much more complicated thing.”
- Astronaut on STS-85

The planning board has 5 pre-populated columns: unknowns, knowns, potential actions, completed actions, and results. Keeping track of every action and its result, allows crew to test one thing at a time.

“The ability to communicate what is known and unknown, and how to make the unknown known, is critical.”
- Flight Controller

Swimlanes function similarly to branches on a fault tree. Astronauts are encouraged to follow a path and lop it off if it is unrelated, this makes the path more clear.

“Basically, you’re helping me do a storyboard, lopping off branches on the fault tree.”
- Astronaut on Expedition 22

Using the bar at the bottom of the board, crew members can quickly capture audio, video, and photos on their iPad and add media to the board.

“Yeah, it seems to me that it makes the kind of stuff you’d want to do anyway easier to manipulate and move around, and that’s all really good.”
- Astronaut on STS-127

Crew members can set named timers which they can drag into specific cards. This associates them with a certain task.

“We have our timers, the little white egg timers... a timer goes off and we’re all looking at each other. What was that for?”
- Astronaut on STS-127

During user testing, crew members mentioned time and time again how difficult and time- consuming typing can be in zero-gravity circumstances. Document written records through voice-to-text technology.

“That can be very diagnostic to a ground team. So video and audio as well as the voice to text I think would be extremely useful and time-saving useful for everybody.”
- Astronaut on STS-127

Send messages associated with a certain point in time using the “Send” button on the planning board. Receive messages from MCC in the form of cards.

“The thing I like the most is exactly that - the ability to click a button and now the ground is getting information!”
- Astronaut on STS-127

Being resourceful (interviews with astronauts):
The client had told us that no past team had managed to talk to an astronaut. However, I was very determined to talk to my end-user, so I reached out to multiple astronauts on LinkedIn and email. Persistence and luck led me to find 5 astronauts who participated in our project!

Dealing with differing opinions (astronauts vs MCC):
Astronauts and MCC often had differing opinions- Level of autonomy, features required, etc. Since our end user is the astronaut, I placed more weight on their opinion while keeping MCC's view in mind.

Responsible for Interaction and Visual design:
My key contribution was designing functionality, building the entire prototype (interaction design) and visual design for the project. I built a design system from scratch and created reusable components.

The ABCD model is being used by the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames Research Center!