Ideation through rapid iteration

After presenting their research to the NASA HCI group and the BASALT team, the Scoria team orchestrated a visioning session with our users. They guided the group through an ideation exercise in which small teams generated ideas for design solutions via sticky note and paper prototypes. By the end of the exercise, the Scoria team and users had collectively generated just over 100 ideas. The Scoria team then grouped these ideas into eight high-level themes. They created a more detailed paper prototype for each theme that they then concept tested with their BASALT users.

The team decided to focus on improving the capture of the scientific observations coming from the EV. This use case was generated in direct response to the the second opportunity space that emerged in research regarding the experiential and perceptual, i.e. uniquely human, data being lost. A design to capture geologic observations in a clear and concise format would allow the science backroom team to easily reference the information while determining the leaderboard of sample priorities. Furthermore, storing the observations in a standardized, searchable database would allow for easy data aggregation across multiple sites during future analysis.

Once the Scoria team had their design space scoped down to capturing the EV’s scientific observations, they moved forward with developing a single design to address that specific scenario. They named this design “Fieldbook” in reference to the yellow notebooks geologists take into the field with them to write down notes and observations.

The team’s initial design solution consisted of a tablet-based interface for the EV to carry into the field, and a desktop interface for the IV inside the habitat. The EV was able to take photos with the tablet and touch a specific point on the photo, when this happened the same point appeared in real-time on the IV interface. This interaction allowed the EV to clearly indicate each specific point of interest to which their subsequent observations pertained.

Each time the EV indicated a point of interest on the photo, the IV was provided with a form to capture the vocal descriptions that followed. Since the EV typically provided similar sets of information for each point of interest (color, surface condition, texture), the form was designed around these characteristics to allow the IV to quickly input commonly collected data. Standardizing the data input in this fashion would allow the IV to send an organized and concise data packet to the science team for real-time decision making.

Figure 11. The initial EV and IV designs for Fieldbook. Mocks by scoria team members.

User Testing Results in Design Pivot

The Scoria team moved forward with building an interactive prototype of their initial design to test with members of the BASALT team in the field. In July the Scoria research team met the BASALT team at the Craters of the Moon National Monument in Arco, Idaho. The BASALT team chose Craters of the Moon as a mission deployment site because of its similarity to the terrain on Mars. As the most recent eruption site in the continental U.S., with volcanic activity occurring as recent as 2,000 years ago, this lava terrain was the closest that the BASALT team could get to practicing field geology in an actual Martian environment.

During this testing the research team uncovered multiple insights for how to improve the design. The greatest insight was the desire for two-way annotation between the EV and IV in the interface. The Scoria team had intended the ability to annotate the photo with a dot to be an EV-only feature. However, the one-way constraint had not yet been added into the code at the time of the Idaho trip. During testing, the researcher noticed that IV users started using the tool to draw the EV’s attention to elements that the EV had not noticed elsewhere on the photo. This accidental two-way pointing interaction resulted in rich discussion between the IV and EV and prompted the EV to explore the site further. This observation directly mapped to the team’s goal to design for EV exploration over pure execution. It was concrete evidence that fostering a focused, exploration-oriented conversation between the EV and the IV can result in new discoveries.

After discovering its value in the field, the Scoria team pivoted to fully supported the two-way pointing interaction for both the EV and the IV. They also implemented a drawing tool for both EV/IV UIs in response to the feedback BASALT users gave about wanting to be able to circle areas and draw arrows. Although these changes occurred late in the team’s design cycle, they had maintained enough flexibility to incorporate the feedback knowing that the opportunity to test in the field would provide valuable data despite its inconvenient timing.

Final Design: Fieldbook

After implementing changes in response to the BASALT user feedback, the Scoria team created a final prototype for the Fieldbook tool. Its core element was Fieldbook Canvas, a working two-part web application designed to capture geological observations during a traverse. This two-way image annotation tool was designed to bring the EV and IV into a shared mental space, equipping them to explore the Martian terrain together by drawing each other’s attention to areas of interest. The EV was equipped with a belt and attachable tablet with which to take photos and annotate them on the Fieldbook Canvas app. The IV was able to pull the app up on their workstation inside the habitat.

Figure 12. Final designs for the Fieldbook Canvas EV and IV interfaces. Both are able to drop pinpoints on areas of interest and use the draw function to circle areas and draw arrows. Design by Scoria team members.

The team also designed a concept and wireframe mocks for a second application they called Fieldbook Gallery. The Gallery tool was designed for the SBT to quickly parse the incoming images, annotations, and recordings from the EV and IV in order to make quick, informed decisions about sample priorities. It included incremental audio navigation controls to skip behind or ahead in the audio, the ability to add markers in an audio file to return to, and speech-to-text transcription of the audio files. It would also connect snippets of audio to a specific photo.

Together, Fieldbook Canvas and Gallery met the user needs exhibited in the overall research insights in multiple ways. Primarily, the real-time annotation of Fieldbook Canvas allowed the EV and IV to collaborate closely with each other during the exploration process. The audio/visual data capture elements of Fieldbook Gallery prevented the need for the IV to take such rigorous notes for the SBT and instead freed them up to engage more with the EV on exploration tasks.

Figure 13. Final mock exploration for the Fieldbook Gallery tool for the Science Backroom Team (SBT). The tool would provide a view of each photo alongside the transcribed text that was recorded by the EV and IV while they were describing it as well as the ability to

Design Opportunities for Increasing Human Explorers’ Autonomy In a Mars Mission

However, the culmination of the Scoria team’s research showed that current simulations of Mars geology work were not leveraging the advantage of human agency. Communication lines were chaotic, perceptual data were not captured, miscommunication resulted in inefficiencies, and all tools were made for procedural execution rather than in true support of the exploration-oriented mission.

The Scoria team took a user-centered design approach to prototype a product that addressed these breakdowns. This resulted in a two-part web application that fostered an exploration-oriented conversation between the crew on Mars and delivered a digestible data package to the science team on Earth to support quick and efficient realignment of priorities in real-time. The product could be implemented to streamline the operations of an exploration-based mission to make room for the inherent advantage of a human crew, ultimately resulting in increased scientific return and increased autonomy for the crew members.

Citation: 2019 EPIC Proceedings pp 187–206, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic