Identifying Decision Maker Information Requirements For Knowledge-Centric Information Systems Harvey S. Smallman, Heather M. Oonk, and Ronald A. Moore Pacific Science & Engineering Group, Inc. 6310 Greenwich Drive, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92122 (858) 535–1661 smallman@pacific-science.com, hmoonk@pacific-science.com , and ramoore@pacific-science.com Abstract How can the Navy best meet the C 2 needs of decision makers in command centers? The Navy’s Command 21 program is working to support decision makers through the joint development of Web-architectures and integrated support applications. A functioning prototype system was created for the Global 2000 War Game. Building on an earlier cognitive task analysis (CTA) conducted on Joint Operation Center (JOC) personnel (Moore & Averett, 1999), structured interviews were conducted with potential Global prototype users to identify their information requirements for this new prototype. Participants reported difficulty quickly developing, maintaining and sharing situation awareness (SA) with other staff. They also reported difficulty exchanging information and fostering collaborative work processes with others. From a master list of comments and answers to questions, four categories of user requirement emerged (general, format, content, and feature) that could be directly related to the prototype design. Further distillation led to the identification of a total of 14 key user requirements. How design solutions for support of these 14 requirements led to the initial specifications for a wall- sized shared display - or “Knowledge Wall” - fusing all information relevant to mission status are elaborated. 1. Introduction A recent Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group report noted that the speed of command is compromised by fleet decision makers being faced with too much data and not enough information (Wagoner et al., 1997). The Navy’s Command 21 program is working to Web-enable command centers to deliver Knowledge Management tools and a new Concept of Operations (ConOps) to address this problem. As part of this effort, a fully functional prototype system - or “Knowledge Wall” (KW) - was created for Global 2000. Global 2000 is a War Game where potential high technology solutions for future naval needs are débuted. To determine the specific tools and features that this prototype should possess, a cognitive task analysis (CTA) was conducted to determine the specific information needs of the users of the KW prototype at Global 2000.