Option Awareness

Option Awareness (OA) is a person’s deep understanding of their options — including how those options perform over time and under different circumstances.

© 2008-2022, The MITRE Corporation.

Night vision goggles with the letters OA alternating with data visualizations

Night vision goggles for the mind.™

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WHY OA?

It is always hard to make a good decision without knowing what’s going on — without Situation Awareness (SA). In situations where it’s easy to mentally translate “what’s going on” into “what to do about it”, having good SA is enough to make a good decision about what to do next.

As situations become more complex, time-pressured, and uncertain, decision makers need both SA and Option Awareness (OA) — knowledge of “what to do about it”.

INCREASING OA

MITRE has developed and evaluated principles and methods for increasing people’s OA and applied them in domains including crisis management, healthcare, command and control, and many others. These are the main steps:

A model with several concepts connected by arrows that describe their relationships

1. Obtain Forecast Models

You need at least one method of estimating future outcomes for different actions you could take, but the more the better.

A simulation readout of data with multiple interlocking gears on top of it. The gears represent simulation variables, being turned in different directions to produce different simulation outcomes.

2. Generate Decision Spaces

We call the collection of estimated outcomes for different options, over a range of plausible future conditions, a “decision space”.

A confident decision maker selecting parts of a data visualization on a computer

3. Visualize Interactive Decision Spaces

Interactive Decision Space Visualizations (DSVs) empower people to explore and interrogate the decision space, helping them not only better understand their current options but develop even better ones.

PUBLICATIONS

Since 2008, the OA team has authored more than two dozen publications on topics spanning OA theory and principles, experimental research, and applications to real-world problems.

A person’s profile highlighting their brain
A person’s profile highlighting their brain

Providing an option awareness basis for naturalistic decision making


Klein, G. L., Drury, J. L., & Pfaff, M. S. (2011). Providing an option awareness basis for naturalistic decision making. Cognitive Technology, 16(2), 10-19.

A brain that is half-human, half-machine.
A brain that is half-human, half-machine.

Reimagining SA and OA for human-machine teaming


Drury, J. L., Klein, G. L., Booker, L., Ryall, K., & Dubrow, S. (2022). Reimagining situation awareness and option awareness for human-machine teaming. 2022 IEEE Conference on Cognitive and Computational Aspects of Situation Management (CogSIMA), 9–15.

A network model showing relationships between many concepts
A network model showing relationships between many concepts

Crowdsourcing mental models using DESIM


Pfaff, M. S., Drury, J. L., & Klein, G. L. (2015). Crowdsourcing mental models using DESIM (Descriptive to Executable Simulation Modeling). Paper presented at the Naturalistic Decision Making Conference, McLean, VA.

A triumphant fist in the air
A triumphant fist in the air

Patient empowerment with shared decision spaces


Pfaff, M. S., Darling, E., Drury, J. L., & Klein, G. L. (2014). Patient empowerment with shared decision spaces​. In Procedia Technology: HCIST 2014 – International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies (Vol. 16, pp. 1477-1486).​

A series of data visualizations
A series of data visualizations

DSV: Lessons learned and design principles


Drury, J. L., Pfaff, M. S., Klein, G. L., & Liu, Y. (2013). Decision space visualization: Lessons learned and design principles. In M. Kurosu (Ed.), Proceedings of the 15th HCI International 2013, Part IV (Vol. 8007, pp. 658-667). Berlin: Springer.

Picks "mining" a data visualization
Picks "mining" a data visualization

Requirements for data mining the decision space


Drury, J. L., Klein, G. L., Musman, S., Liu, Y., & Pfaff, M. S. (2012). Requirements for data mining the decision space. Paper presented at the 17th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (ICCRTS), Fairfax, VA.

SOFTWARE

MITRE’s Option Awareness research has produced an evolving line of software tools for crowdsourcing collective expertise and providing interactive decision space visualizations. Contact us for more information!

A network model showing relationships between many concepts
A network model showing relationships between many concepts

DESIM


A methodology and software toolkit for crowdsourcing expert knowledge on complex topics as a basis for simulating option outcomes.

A series of data visualizations
A series of data visualizations

DECISIVE


Configurable general-purpose Web-based decision space visualization tool for exploring complex decision-making scenarios through interactive visualizations of option outcomes, from any data source.

Two people communicating through overlapping speech bubbles, with a checkmark inside the overlap
Two people communicating through overlapping speech bubbles, with a checkmark inside the overlap

Patient Decision Space


A webapp to improve collaborative OA during shared doctor-patient decision making by tailoring treatment options for a patient’s demography, preferences, and diagnosis.

CONTACT US

Our work is supported by a diverse team of academic, technical, and operational experts at The MITRE Corporation and collaborating organizations.

MITRE develops innovative capabilities that empower decision makers and their teams to make high-quality decisions with speed, confidence, and impact.

Want to start a discussion or request a demo? Contact the OA team using the form below. We look forward to hearing from you!

© The MITRE Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Approved for Public Release; distribution unlimited; case #20-03307-1, #15-0039, #14-1472.

Night vision goggles with the letters OA alternating with data visualizations

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