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- Extravehicular (EV): The EV performs the “boots on the ground” role on Mars. They suit up and perform extravehicular traverses on the Martian surface to collect geological samples. They communicate with the Intravehicular crew member and refer to wrist-based cue cards to ensure they are meeting scientific goals.
- Intravehicular (IV): The IV has their “eyes on the ground” for the EV while on Mars. They stay inside the habitat on the Martian surface and communicate what the EV is seeing to the Science Backroom Team (SBT) and send feedback from the SBT to the EV on what samples to collect.
- Science Backroom Team (SBT): The SBT is a team of scientist experts on Earth who analyze data collected by the EV on Mars and make recommendations to the IV on what sites they should tell the EV to pursue and where to samples from.
Figure 3. The operational team setup of a Mars mission, to be recreated by the BASALT analog mission team. Illustration by Scoria team members.
The Scoria team also used information from the literature review and interviews to map out the timeline of a geological traverse, the part of the mission where the EV ventures outside of the habitat to collect samples. This helped the team identify the various goals of each user at various stages of their mission journey.
Figure 4. The timeline of a geologic traverse. Illustration by Scoria team members.
Workshopping and Bodystorming User Needs and Pain Points
The preliminary research established a firm foundation for the Scoria team to work from. By taking the time to map out the complexity of the problem space, the team was able to pinpoint next steps for the research. This involved understanding the users’ breakdowns and pain points. To achieve this, the Scoria team held a workshop with NASA analog mission geologist and performed a bodystorming exercise of the BASALT operations protocol.
Workshopping User Needs
The Scoria team visited Goddard Space Flight Center to meet with four planetary geologists who doubled as participants in NASA’s analog missions for Mars. Once again, the team had limited access to these users and were allotted exactly one hour with them. So, rather than a traditional face-to-face interview, Scoria members decided to run the meeting workshop-style with two co-creation exercises. This enabled them to collect a large amount of information from multiple people in a small amount of time.
Love/Hate Exercise: In this exercise, the geologists were asked to write out what they loved and hated most about doing geological field work.
- Themes of what the geologists loved included: the challenge of the science, the idea of exploration, and working with fun and intelligent teammates.
- Themes of what the geologists hated included: carrying clunky scientific instruments, novice field workers making poor safety decisions, teammates not being flexible, and getting interrupted in the middle of a task.
Fairy Godmother/ “Supersuit” Exercise: In this exercise the geologists were asked to imagine either a fairy godmother who could grant them any wish or to imagine their ideal field geology “supersuit” and sketch these on a piece of paper. Some examples of desires users expressed through these sketches included:
- The ability to reference sample data that has already been collected
- A glanceable status check of their teammates’ safety
- A way to offload the physical weight of instruments, samples, and tools
These exercises helped bring the most salient problems to the forefront quickly, making great use of all of the attendees’ time and leaving extra time for rich discussion.
Figure 5 (left). One geologist drew an augmented reality heads-up display to monitor team safety. Figure 6 (right). Another took a lower-tech solution and asked for a donkey to carry their equipment as their idea of a “fairy godmother”. Photos taken by Scoria team member.
Bodystorming A Mars Mission In Pittsburgh’s Frick Park
With three months of user research finished and a month left until they would get to observe the BASALT users in person, the Scoria team decided to put the knowledge they had collected into action and run a mock analog mission in Pittsburgh’s nearby Frick Park. Walking through the operational protocol themselves would help the team develop a closer understanding of it, thus better preparing them to strategically approach the upcoming in-person observation of the BASALT team.
This exercise also presented an opportunity for the Scoria team members to test out some hypotheses they had developed around user pain points. These hypotheses included concerns over team communications, human factors issues of balancing cue cards with other scientific equipment, and the EV being too distracted by operational protocol to engage in exploratory behavior.
Figure 7. The Scoria Team recruited classmates to run the bodystorming exercise. These participants created a grid system in their cue card maps to help streamline communications. Photo taken by Scoria team member.
The Scoria team designed the exercise to mimic as many of the BASALT team procedures as possible. Instead of Mars or a lava field on Earth, they studied a local park. They replaced the BASALT science objective of exploring microbial geology with the objective of characterizing the park’s tree life. The team then recreated the mission workflow by assigning team members to the three main roles in a traverse (EV, IV, and SBT) and by simulating a time delay of five minutes between the IV and the SBT. Using Google Earth for remote imaging data, they planned a path to have the EV explore through the park. They then identified samples of interest (such as acorns, pine cones, and types of trees) and equipped the EV with Tupperware to collect the samples.
During the exercise the EV was required to wear a cumbersome jacket and gloves to simulate the physical constraints of an astronaut suit and BASALT team equipment. All three team members were able to communicate with each other via phone connection, the EV wearing a headset on call to the IV. Meanwhile the IV was also on a separate call with the SBT with a 5-minute time delay for messages sent either way. Both the IV and the SBT had access to a computer and had Google Earth pulled up during the traverse to help track and direct the EV toward areas of interest in the park. The team also instituted a 40-minute time limit from the time the EV left the car to when they returned, recreating the constraint of having limited oxygen supply.
The Scoria team ran the exercise twice, once taking on the crew member roles themselves and once where they recruited classmates to be the crew members so they could observe. Running the exercise as crew members gave the Scoria team insight into the psyche of all three roles during a traverse. They particularly felt pressure related to the time constraints and communication delay.
Running the exercise as observers gave the Scoria team an opportunity to observe how the participants interacted with each other. They were specifically interested in how the participants notated their cue card materials with a grid pattern to better communicate location with each other.
Contextual Inquiry with the BASALT Team
At the end of May 2016, the Scoria team traveled to the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California to observe NASA’s BASALT team practice a Mars traverse. BASALT used an outdoor space on the Ames campus called the “Mars yard” to simulate the hills, craters and rocks typically found on Martian terrain.
Since this was one of the few times the Scoria team would be able to observe a traverse in person, they strategized how to split up the team to observe areas of interest. This strategy was informed by prior research and the bodystorming exercise. The Scoria team identified the IV as a user of particular interest due to its role as a communicator to both the EV and SBT, and the pressure to communicate within a time delay. The team was also interested in how the EV balanced referencing cue card material with making exploratory observations in the form of vocal descriptions and photographs. Finally, the team was interested in how the SBT took in all of this information to make recommendations for where the EV should take a physical rock sample.
The Scoria team spent three days observing the BASALT team with emphasis on the above areas of interest. They took these observations back to Pittsburgh and started to combine them with prior research for a holistic analysis of the user journey of a BASALT mission.
The Scoria team used the affinity diagramming method to synthesize data across all of their research (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1999). This allowed the team to deconstruct the data into single units of information and reconstruct the units into meaningful groups, through which themes emerged.
Figure 8. The EV observes a potential rock sample, getting on his knees to keep the rock in the frame of view of his chest camera for the IV and SBT teams. He is also wearing a heavy backpack full of networking equipment that both allows him to communicate with the IV and serves as a recreation of the physical constraints astronauts will endure on Mars.
Figure 9. In the IV station, two BASALT teammates keep an eye on the EV’s progress and communicate it to the SBT. Photos taken by Scoria team member.
Figure 10. The Science Backroom Team (SBT) awaits more information before they can determine the priority of samples to collect. Photo taken by Scoria team member.