Follow Us:

David deMoulpied checks out a 3D virtual room designed to make tactical decision-making easier. DeMoulpied can zoom in on any window in the virtual room and open it as a regular desktop window, whether it's a live satellite feed, a chart, or a still photo.

"Combining human factors engineering and visualization technologies helps users deal with large amounts of data."

David deMoulpied checks out a 3D virtual room designed to make tactical decision-making easier. DeMoulpied can zoom in on any window in the virtual room and open it as a regular desktop window, whether it's a live satellite feed, a chart, or a still photo.

Dave deMoulpied loves technology and gadgets. So it's fitting that he's using cutting-edge graphics methods to help people quickly understand huge amounts of data so they can make better decisions under pressure. If you're a battle commander, or you manage large emergency operations, deMoulpied's work in graphic displays could one day make your work easier.

DeMoulpied is the section leader for MITRE's Collaboration and Visualization section, part of the Information Technologies division. One of his projects is a "virtual room," or VRoom. DeMoulpied calls it a 3D room-based metaphor for human-computer interaction. The result is simple and amazing.

The VRoom is so simple in that it doesn't use any special 3D equipment beyond today's average PC or laptop. The standard monitor or laptop screen shows the interior of a room. The room is shown in 3D perspective and has a number of windows in the walls. It's the windows that give the VRoom its power. Each window is an active computer window that can show any kind of data feed. For example, you can configure the windows to show satellite imagery, maps, tables, aerial photos, and a live video feed from a reconnaissance drone.

"You can navigate around the room and zoom in on any window to examine the information in detail," says deMoulpied. "You can also put the windows anywhere in the room you want—whatever layout makes it easy for you to process the information."

The ease of processing information is the key to the VRoom. Using the current desktop metaphor, if you have to look at more than several windows at a time, you have to go through the hide-and-seek shuffle. It can be frustrating and time-consuming. In working with windows or documents on your regular desktop, it's difficult to have more than three or four that don't overlap. Often, you need to see all the information feeds at once to get the big picture of a battlefield or emergency situation.

"Effective interface design helps users make decisions better and faster," says deMoulpied. "Our work is a combination of human factors and visualization research that helps users interact easily with a large amount of data. Human factors and visualization is the bridge between advanced computing technology and the users."

DeMoulpied recently celebrated his 10-year anniversary with MITRE. He started as a summer hire while in college, working in a different department. "Back then I worked in the Reliability and Maintainability Center analyzing failure rates of radar systems," says deMoulpied. He started out as an electrical engineer in college and then shifted his focus to computer architecture and computer science. "When I came back to MITRE full-time, I transitioned to a software engineering position."

DeMoulpied says that MITRE's reputation as a leader in cutting-edge technology is what drew him here in the first place. "The fact that we work in the public interest and have a positive impact every day is also very gratifying," he says. "The atmosphere here makes it easy to learn new things. And you have a lot of enthusiastic peers who are eager to share knowledge. It's a wonderful and rewarding place to work."