Adapting LifeLines to Army Officer Personnel Processes Rachael Bradley College of Information Studies University of Maryland College Park, MD [email protected] Scott Nestler Robert H. Smith School of Business University of Maryland College Park, MD [email protected] ABSTRACT Visualizing personal histories requires a tool that can present users with multiple time intervals along with supporting information. The Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the University of Maryland created LifeLines, a visualization tool for personal histories in 1994 to visualize youth records [7]. The software was re-coded in 2003 to facilitate easy zooming, but not all of the original functionality was incorporated. Our work implements some of the original functionality in the new coding structure, corrects errors which became apparent with a new data set, and adapts LifeLines for use by the United States Army in officer assignments, promotions, and selections. At this time, the Army is reviewing the software for integration into their personnel processes. Keywords Personal histories; Information visualization; Decision Support Systems; United States Army 1. INTRODUCTION Temporal data, such as a history of events in an individual's life, requires specialized visualization tools. These tools must take into account events that occur only once or repeatedly, and which span any length of time. A successful visualization tool must present multiple events in a single display but still allow users to interact with events to access additional information. While general principles for visualizing temporal data cross disciplines, truly effective visualization tools need to be customized to their specific domain. This paper discusses the adaptation of LifeLines 2.0, a tool developed by the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab HCIL for visualizing event histories, to the United States Army assignment, promotion, and selection processes. Section 2 describes U.S. Army Officer assignment, promotion, and selection processes to provide context for the rest of the paper. Section 3 reviews previous literature about event histories and other applications for event visualization. Section 4 reviews the history of LifeLines. Section 5 describes corrections and improvements made to the LifeLines interface. Section 6 describes how LifeLines was then adapted to meet Army needs. Section 7 wraps up by reviewing the future work required to integrate LifeLines into the Army's review processes. 2. ARMY OFFICER ASSIGNMENT AND PROMOTION Officer assignment, promotion, and selection processes in the Unites States Army require leaders to make important decisions in little time using data from several sources. With regard to assignments, the goal of the Army’s Director of Officer Personnel Management is to optimize officer manning by assigning the right officers, at the right place, at the right time. In a recent message [19], the director outlined the following assignment consideration priorities: Army requirements come first, professional development comes second, and individual preference comes third. Additionally, the Army attempts to maximize an officer's dwell time, time at home station with families, and also leverage deployment experience throughout key places, two goals which may be at odds with each other. For example, an operationally experienced officer who would be key to resetting a unit after deployment may also be the right officer for the Army to send to a training center or a key joint billet prior to battalion command. To balance these tasks, it is imperative that the Army’s assignment managers have the ability to not just examine an officer’s career history but also make meaningful comparisons between officers to ensure that the “right officer, right place, right time” goal is met. When selecting officers for promotion or attendance at higher-level education and training courses, the U.S. Army uses a centralized promotion board of approximately 18-21 officers to review personnel records [14]. The information used to determine selection includes: • A one-page tabular display of an officer’s career history, qualifications, education, and experience called an Officer Record Brief (ORB) [17], as shown in Figure 1; • Performance evaluations: 1. Officer Evaluation Reports (OER) which rate officers against army values and leadership skills and provide a final performance and potential evaluation of outstanding, satisfactory or unsatisfactory [16], or 2. Academic Evaluation Reports (AER) which describes the officers' studies, contributions to their field, participation,and if the evaluator would recommend them for further studies [18]; • Background documentation including a ¾ - length photograph of the officer, award certificates given for outstanding service or achievement [5]. Figure 1: A traditional Officer Record Brief (ORB) is a one-page tabular display of an officer’s career history, qualifications, education, and experience. LifeLines 3.0 is being adapted to visually represent the career history and education sections of this information. According to the Army’s Human Resources Command web site [14], the promotion selection system is to “select for promotion those officers who have demonstrated that they possess the professional and moral qualifications, integrity, physical fitness, and ability required to successfully perform the duties expected of an officer in the next higher grade." Each member of the promotion board must review all of the documents for each officer being considered for promotion and the maximum amount of time available to view each file is about 5 minutes [15]. While temporal visualization cannot present all the necessary information, an effective visualization tool can present an officer's professional history and links to supporting documents to facilitate making an informed assessment. The need to compare personal history information and comprehend a high volume of information in a short amount of time makes these processes good candidates for visualization techniques. 3. EVENT HISTORY VISUALIZATIONS Visualizations for event histories assist decision-making in a number of disciplines, including management, medical, and legal disciplines. The visualization techniques used for one domain apply, with some modification, to the others. Many event history visualizations chart time on the x-axis and use lines to represent