Services

Decision-centered design radically improves human-machine teaming

We design and deliver revolutionary decision-support systems

Transform complex data and technology into intuitive platforms that help you act with speed, confidence, and clarity.

  • Enable people to make better decisions in complex, high-stakes environments by transforming overwhelming data and integrating advanced technologies into intuitive, actionable insights.

    Decision Centered Design bridges the gap between human expertise and machine intelligence, ensuring users can understand, trust, and effectively leverage the systems they depend on.

  • We design starting from the decision making. Our Applied Cognitive Systems Engineering (ACSE) methodology combines cognitive psychology, systems engineering, perceptual science, and human-centered design. This enables us to create decision-support systems optimized for real-world decision-making.

    We study how experts operate and capture an expert the mental model of their domain. We then identify critical decision requirements, and design interfaces, workflows, and human-machine interactions that reduce cognitive burden while enhancing situational awareness and operational effectiveness.

  • When systems design starts from the decision making, organizations gain faster, more confident, and more resilient decision-making capabilities. By framing information around the expert mental model, the system reinforces domain concepts for accurate situational awareness. This, in turn, reduces overload, minimizes automation surprises, and improves user acceptance.

    Decision Centered Design enables teams to uncover critical insights, maintain mission focus, and achieve superior outcomes in demanding operational environments.

Different Industries. Different Names. Same Mission.

The world is inherently complex, and your team needs tools that reliably support informed decision making.

You may call it a:

  • Decision Support System (DSS)

  • Observability Platform

  • Expert System

  • Business Intelligence Dashboard

  • Common Operating Picture

  • Operations Center.

Whatever the name, the goal is the same: helping people make better decisions in complex environments.

Human-Machine Teams That Perform Under Pressure

At RCS, we design systems that communicate information the way experts naturally think—not the way computers naturally process it. Whether that means interactive visualizations, intelligent workflows, concise summaries, predictive insights, or AI-assisted recommendations, we match the presentation of information to the decisions people need to make.

By aligning information structure with expert mental models and embedding expertise directly into the system, we help entire teams operate effectively across a wide range of challenges. The result is informed decision-making at mission pace, even under high-pressure conditions—enabling faster action, stronger situational awareness, and superior mission outcomes.

Clarity. Confidence. Competitive Advantage.

Decision-centered systems benefit organizations through improved situational awareness, greater trust in technology, reduced cognitive burden, accelerated adoption, and more resilient decision-making in complex and rapidly changing environments. We enable users to maintain focus on what matters most.

Case Study

Client
US Army CERDEC

Project
RCS was asked to redesign a video and analytics monitoring dashboard to operate at scale, at mission-needed pace after analysts rejected the original implementation due to data overload. RCS reimagined the existing data-centric display of AI technology into a decision-centered dashboard.

Impact

  • A unified dashboard brought together outputs from several AI models in a single interface, enabling faster, more informed video selection.

  • Analysts were able to select relevant video faster and pursue critical insights with greater confidence.

  • Analysts gained mission context instantly from a single interaction through coordinated visualizations.

  • They went from struggling with annotation from an hour of footage to successfully traversing footage that would take over a year to view. In other words, the new tool delivered benefits on the order of a factor of 20,000.

We build powerful solutions for high-stakes, fast-paced decision environments where people must make sense of complexity and act with confidence.

Build Decision-Centered Systems with RCS
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