Worth a Thousand Sources: UX for Continental Defence

Context

Modern continental surveillance depends on the ability to compile a coherent operational picture from multiple distributed sources: sensors, feeds, and nodes spread across large geographic areas with limited and changing connectivity. The challenge is not just technological. It is human. Operators and analysts must make sense of complex, dynamic information under time pressure, in environments where the cost of misreading the picture is high.

Worth a Thousand Sources is a Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) challenge issued through the IDEaS program (Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security). The challenge sought innovative solutions to support the compilation of a consistent common operational picture in constrained environments, through the efficient exchange and processing of data from multiple distributed sources.

Thales Digital Solutions was selected as an innovator under this challenge, progressing through Milestone 1a into Milestone 1b, advancing the Technology Readiness Level from approximately TRL 3-4 to TRL 5-6.

The Challenge

Milestone 1a had established the foundational data fusion architecture. Milestone 1b shifted focus to a different and equally complex problem: network management in an edge computing scenario.

When sources are distributed across a network with varying connection capacity, operators need to understand the network itself, not just the data it carries. Where is processing happening? What is the load on each node? How much delay exists between sources? What happens to the operational picture when connectivity degrades?

These are questions that no amount of algorithmic sophistication can answer for an operator automatically. Someone has to look at the network state and make decisions. The interface through which they do that is where UX becomes mission-critical.

I joined the project at the start of Milestone 1b as the sole UX designer, taking over after the departure of the previous UX resource following the discovery phase.

The Approach

Phase 1 | Workshop and Use Case Definition

The first phase focused on establishing a shared understanding of what the system needed to do and for whom. I facilitated an internal workshop bringing together software engineers, developers, researchers, and a project manager from Thales Québec, as well as a Thales team from the Netherlands.

The workshop used structured ideation and prioritization activities to define the use case that would guide Milestone 1b development: aligning a technically diverse, internationally distributed team around a common understanding of user needs and system requirements before development began.

Phase 2 | Interaction Design and User Testing

With the use case established, the second phase focused on designing the interface for network management: defining the appearance, interaction model, and essential features of the system operators and analysts would use to monitor and understand the network state in real time.

This included determining what information needed to be visible, how it should be prioritized, and how operators could navigate a complex, dynamic picture without being overwhelmed by data they did not need in the moment.

User testing was conducted with participants who had relevant operational knowledge; people familiar with the realities of the terrain and the cognitive demands of the operator role. The findings were significant: they revealed a clear gap between what the development team had assumed operators would need to see and what operators actually needed to make decisions effectively. The interface was adapted based on those findings, prioritizing the information that mattered most to the people who would actually use the system.

What the Work Produced

The user testing findings allowed the team to substantially refocus the interface, moving away from a display optimized for technical completeness toward one optimized for operational utility. Information that was present because it existed in the system was subordinated to information that operators needed to act.

The result was a system interface aligned with how operators actually think and work in constrained environments, grounded in real user needs rather than engineering assumptions.

A note on scope: The original IDEaS challenge description explicitly scoped human factors considerations out of the technological challenge. Thales recognized early in Milestone 1b that building a system operators could not effectively use would undermine the value of the underlying technology and brought UX into the process accordingly. That decision proved consequential.

Deliverables

• Use case definition workshop facilitation
• Interaction design and interface specifications for the network management system
• User testing with operationally knowledgeable participants
• Redesigned interface prioritized around operational user needs

Project period: April 2024 — March 2025
Client: Thales Digital Solutions
Purchaser: Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) — IDEaS Program
IDEaS Milestone: 1b (TRL 3-4 → TRL 5-6)
Language of work: English and French