Ideas built into VIAssist were a direct result of a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) of IA analysts performed by Secure Decisions.  The primary design objective was to improve an analyst's situation awareness.

VIAssist was designed to be an interactive framework of panels.  A notion of a “main” panel exists that is to be the focal point of the application.  Whichever one of the available views currently occupies the main panel, the appropriate toolbar for that view is displayed in the main panel’s toolbar area (lower part of the window).  An analyst can place any view he likes into the main panel by double clicking a specific “hot” area in the desired view to display.  Upon doing so, the current contents of the main panel will switch with the selected view’s panel leaving the newly selected view in the main panel and the old main panel view in the newly selected view’s panel.  Keeping views visible that are relevant to the analyst helps the analyst keep the best possible situational awareness.

    KEY FEATURES
    Multiple displays
    Role-based views
    Multiple visualizations of dataset
    Coordinated views
    Reporting

Architecture VIAssist was implemented in the Microsoft .NET framework using the managed language C# and integrated various unmanaged C++ ActiveX controls for a variety of visualizations.  Data for the demonstration was pseudo-randomly generated by the application and stored in an object known as a data model.  Extensive use of the publish-subscribe pattern was used to notify all “interested” views whenever the data model was modified.

Evaluation The CWID Senior Management Group named the VIAssist Technology Trial IT05.06 among the top technology solutions demonstrated at CWID-06.  This assessment is based on input received from participating warfighters/operators, the Network Operations Working Group (NOWG), the Systems Engineering and Integration Working Group (SEIWG) and site managers.

More information on VIAssist is available at SecureDecisions.com.