THE

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR THE MILITARY-

POLITICAL ARENA

By

Ryan Peroz

Advisor: Professor Kurt Jacobsen








A Thesis

Submitted to the University of Chicago in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Liberal Arts








Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies

(October, 2015)

ABSTRACT

I propose in this thesis to apply user experience design (UXD) processes, ordinarily
applied in business consultations, to the arena of military and political policy to
illuminate what we (and the military-political decision-makers) may gain in effort to
empower foreign affairs.

The UXD in a professional capacity endeavors to identify the social qualitative
factors that engineer specific causal reactions and general customer expectations.
Qualitative, social factors encourage hypotheses on behavioral reactions, and are
explored on a per user, per scenario basis. The qualitative factors driving the
reactions are discovered, measured, and shown to be a reliable occurrence within
probability by an approach that renders social reaction scenarios quantitatively
comparable to one-another, and are then used to inform the UXD on how to design a
new system to achieve business objectives. The UXD relies on the repetitive
sampling and testing of various interaction conditions with users in effort to isolate
and study the causal relationships between user interactions and the effects
produced within the system. Thomas Plmpera, et al., demonstrate in their paper,
Case Selection and Causal Inference in Qualitative Research, the validity of results
gained from small sample sizes to examine systems that contain qualitative
variables, like causal human reactions to system elements, and allow researchers to
discern the probabilities of these outcomes, and begin exploring their causes.1 The
potential advantage that the UXD practice brings to military-political decision-
makers is to provide them with a means of creating environments where ideas can
be tested and verified by comparable denominators in probability, with the
inclusion of a comprehensible measurement on the impact of social reactions under
a set of reproducible conditions.









1 Thomas Plmpera , Vera E. Troegerb , and Eric Neumayerc, Case Selection and Causal

Inference in Qualitative Research (Colchester: University of Essex, 2010), 17.

2

I propose in this thesis to apply user experience design (UXD) processes,

ordinarily applied in business consultations, to the arena of military and political

policy, and to assess the likely benefits and risks of introducing this new evaluative
perspective into the military-political arena. What does it add to the diplomatic
equation? What do we (and the decision-makers) learn that we otherwise would
not have known? How important and credible is the contribution? This thesis is, to a
certain degree, frankly speculative, but I will temper speculation with strict
adherence to the empirical details of a case study of Iraq over the critical 2003-2004
period when fierce insurgencies soon arose in the wake of an initial quick military
conquest. Could these insurgencies have been avoided by any conceivable and
realistic military or diplomatic action?

The potentially beneficial impact that UXD practices can exert on diplomatic

behavior will be examined in this retrospective case study. UXD's methods of human
behavior analysis, human interaction quantification, and principles of information-
driven design will be explained and then critically weighed for their credible impact
in the extremely complex landscape of political and military decision-making. Lastly,
the studys conclusions, and the applicability of UXD in future engagements in the
global political landscape, will be considered. Another consideration that will be
explored is if UXD, when properly applied, is more than just the latest gimmick or
panacea in a parade of such devices (e.g., Planning Programming & Budgeting

Systems, etc).2 Finally, even if user experience design ultimately were to be deemed
irrelevant in itself for this new theater, the very exercise of applying the schematic
to the political sphere will likely flush out revealing insights about this crucial
period in the Iraq war. So, there will be value added to our knowledge even from a
negative result for UXD.

What is UXD? User experience design (UXD) is a process of analysis and

design with two principle variables: the object and its user. This definition is
deliberately very broad. An object could be many things: a home, a power tool, a
computer, a website, or even a room. Understanding how a user interacts with an
object is primarily concerned with, if not restricted to, a purely business concept of
efficiency.3 In any business setting, efficiency draws a direct line to market share
and profits. In effort to secure these profits, businesses strive for a better
understanding of how to manage their customers relationship with their products
and services, like a website, so as to improve bottom line performance. UXD applies
a method of information analysis to change objects for the better, "better" as defined
in light of the user's goals and the businesss objectives. Improvements are
customarily measured in terms of dollars, public opinion swings, and resources
saved. Whatever the goal is, UXD presents a process that will inform a decision-

2 Ida Hoos, Systems Analysis in Public Policy: A Critique (Oakland: University of California

Press, 1982), Introduction, 38, 248. Hoos provides a retrospective analysis referencing both
the popularity of systems analysis methodology for public policy and its inability to produce
results that account for the measurement of social impact; like quality of life (satisfaction),
and therefore fail to affect effective policy decisions whose objectives are fundamentally
socially oriented to begin with.
3 Kaye Sung Chon, Abraham Pizam, and Yoel Mansfeld, Consumer Behavior in Travel and
Tourism (London: Routledge, 2000), 164. Of practical concern...an understanding of
consumers' pre-purchase information-search behavior can play in the design of efficient
marketing strategies.

maker on how to achieve an objective with the best possible results for themselves,
within the boundaries of the specified and attainable user goals.4

In the business arena there has been a boom in UXD technology and

information analysis methodology. Businesses invest in the efficient arrangement of

the pages of customer facing websites, using UXD to interpret every click, track eye-
movement, cursor play, and decipher user reactions with human behavior testing.
They build controlled test environments in in-house laboratories. The tools,
methods, and technologies produced from this era of the information age have
gained a foothold across many industries. Medical, social and economic
development programs, automotive, and the banking industries have all begun to
engage UXD. The leap to a far more complex military-political realm where
efficiency is not reckoned in dollars (or any other quantifiable measure) may benefit
from a wider appreciation of the nature of the competing goals of the engaging
parties. What if the customers do not want what other actors in the system have to
sell (democracy, collaboration, alliances, etc) but want those actors to disengage
altogether? Perhaps the customers, however reluctantly, must integrate this goal
into their own calculus of how to operate in this milieu.

4 Sarah Bloomer, Lori Landesman, and Susan J. Wolfe, Aligning UX Strategy with Business

Goals, User Experience Magazine 6, no. 2 (June 2007),

http://uxpamagazine.org/aligning_ux_business_goals/. First, identify business goals; then
identify usability goals that allow us to develop the UX vision and strategy. Business goals
describe company objectives and direction; most focus on making or saving money. Tactical
goals address day-to-day work, strategic goals focus on fighting the competition, and
corporate goals define the business of the company.

The Practical Application of User Experience Design

A major corporation typically hires a user experience designer for a specific

task, such as improving the efficient use of their website. The designer would begin
by quantifying the definition of the word improve, Improve usually has meant an
increase in sales for the clients website, but in the end it is always up to the client to
define success. The corporation is the client, and is therefore the most important
resource to access for information that allows the designer to plot out, and to
measure, a path to success.

The approach that the designer would take, or that any other user experience

designer may take to improve the efficiency of the clients website are not
necessarily one and the same. There are a variety of tools and methods of analysis
available to a user experience designer, but project constraints concerning time and
resources tend to command these tools, the methods, and the ways that they are
implemented by a UXD.

A user experience designer who is informed of, and aligned with, their

clients objectives may begin her work by engaging in secondary research:

reviewing metrics on user activity and the website, documents of previously mined
data concerning the website or its users, published material on UXD and
information architecture relevant to the industry and the product (website). After
she has gained an understanding of the material currently available, she may run a
heuristics audit of the website to identify problematic interaction elements, or
missing elements, in close context to what her research says would provide the best

experience for the users and for the achievement of the websites objectives for the
users.5

The resulting design should be tested because it is still little more than the

product of the designers assessments; to her, the approach is driven by evidence on

human interaction behavior, to the decision-maker it is often taken as speculation
until proven otherwise. A usability test can reveal whether or not an interaction
element, or series of interaction elements, were designed correctly.
A usability test is just one type of several different research methods that
encompass user experience testing, others include A/B testing, tree testing, user
diaries, and sensory monitoring tests.67
The advantage that user experience testing brings to the decision-makers of
consumer industries is to provide them with a means of creating environments
where ideas can be tested before investing in them. The environment that is
constructed, whether it is physically or as it is most often made, virtually, with
software for online products, becomes the replication of the system for the user
experience tests. Testing with simulated environments, like with usability testing,
provides a means for the user experience designer to determine potential, probable,
and guaranteed breaks in the users experience with a product.
Jakob Nielsen elaborates on the value and accessibility of usability testing:8:

5 Jakob Nielsen, Heuristic Evaluation. in Usability Inspection Methods, ed. R.L. Mack (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994) 81-82.

6 Jeff Sauro,10 Essential User Experience Methods, MeasuringU.com: Usability, Customer

Experience & Statistics, April 7, 2014, accessed October 26, 2015,

http://www.measuringu.com/blog/10-uxmethods.php.
7 Christian Rohrer, When to Use Which User-Experience Research Method, Nielsen
Norman Group, Oct 12, 2014, accessed October 25, 2015,
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/.

7
Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user

tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a
lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources.
The best results come from testing no more than five users and running as many
small tests as you can afford.

Jakob Nielsen supports his statement with the research he had

conducted on usability testing with colleague, Tom Landauer:

Showed that the number of usability problems found in a usability
test with n users is: N (1-(1- L ) n ) where N is the total number of
usability problems in the design and L is the proportion of usability
problems discovered while testing a single user. The typical value of L is
31%, averaged across a large number of projects we studied. Plotting
the curve for L =31% gives the following result:

1998-2015 Nielsen Norman Group

8Nielsen, Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users, Nielsen Norman Group, March 19, 2000.

Accessed October 25, 2015, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-

with-5-users/.

8
The most striking truth of the curve is that zero users give zero insights. As
soon as you collect data from a single test user, your insights shoot up and you
have already learned almost a third of all there is to know about the usability
of the design. The difference between zero and even a little bit of data is
astounding.9
Running numerous user experience tests under varying hypotheses serves to

separate fact from fiction for design assumptions, and provides new insights on the
qualitative traits driving user behavior. By testing repeatedly, the UXD can measure
the probability of traits to manifest within a number of actual user experiences. The
probability statistics on human behavior, and the observational findings by the UXD
administering the tests are usually included in the presentations that will inform the
decision-makers on whether or not a product should be developed or redesigned.
The testing insights serve to determine causal inferences among a population of
users who are interacting with controlled elements within a system.
The dependability a decision-maker can place upon these probabilities is
what Jakob Nielsen has attempted to validate with his studies on usability testing,
primarily by accessing the results of thousands of usability tests and comparing
those results the predicted outcomes on user behavior within a system, with the
actual results via retrospective comparison, and studying the differentiation
between.10
Thomas Plmpera , Vera E. Troegerb , and Eric Neumayer demonstrate in
their paper, Case Selection and Causal Inference in Qualitative Research, the validity

9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.

of results gained from small sample sizes to examine breaks in patterns, or in this
case, breaks in a system, that are representative of qualitative variables working
within the system, allowing a researcher to discern some reliable probabilities for
the occurrence of system breaks, and to begin exploring their causes.11 Their work
supports the rationale that this testing process can indeed calculate a reliable
probability for the occurrence of events, linking the probabilities to the
manifestation of social qualities within the system.
While the user experience designer is running usability tests to confirm the
findings of her research, she is likely drafting personas to represent the users, or
groupings of users, and the characteristics that explain the motivation for the users
actions.
The user experience term for what defines a persona is in fact a misnomer.
The origins of the term as it was coined by Carl Jung,12 defines a personas as:the
mask or faade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment
and not representing the inner personality of the individual.
In contradiction to Jungs definition, Kim Goodwins book, Designing for the
Digital Age, defines a persona from the user experience perspective:13 14 a user
archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation,
interactions, and even visual design.

11 Thomas Plmpera , Vera E. Troegerb , and Eric Neumayerc, Case Selection and Causal

Inference in Qualitative Research (Colchester: University of Essex, 2010), 17.

12 C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in Collected Works of C.G. Jung

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 188-90.

13 Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 450-53.
14 Kristina Mausser, Why Personas are Critical for Content Strategy. Johnny Holland,

February 16, 2012, accessed on October 26, 2015, http://johnnyholland.org/2012/02/why-

personas-are-critical-for-content-strategy/.

10
The contradiction between Jung and Goodwins definition of the word

persona is further clarified at the end of Jungs definition for the word when he
proclaims that [the persona is]not representing the inner personality of the
individual. If a UXDs personas were modeled according to Jungs definition, they
would have no purpose in identifying the motivating characteristics driving users.
According to Jungian terminology, what UXDs are creating is more accurately
defined as an archetype. The persona is technically another subset of the
archetype, which Jung defines as: a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of
thought, image, etc.
For the purpose of user experience designing for the consumer industry, the
archetype, or persona according to the UXD vernacular, represents the motivating
factors behind the users behavior by organizing the details on why people buy.15
Personas are an integral tool employed to assist the planning, creation,
management and measurement of scenarios, tests, and prototypes. They serve to
define archetypes for the actual users who would be interacting with the clients
website. The information they provide is used to inform designers and testers on
why users navigating the website are reacting to it in the way that they are.16

The UXD would map out a concept of how the users understand the

architecture of the websites information (IA), guided by the assumptions on the

users perspectives as detailed within her personas. The IA illustrates the taxonomy

15 Ibid.

16 Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age, 400-02.

11

of choices that the users perceive in their attempts to navigate the interactions of a
system.17
In order to map the IA from the users perspectives, observations are made
on the users behavior as they navigate the website during testing, validating or
correcting assumptions made on their personas. The UXD would document the ways
in which the users relate to the system holistically are users confident in their
assumptions on how to find what they are looking for within the system?

The UXDs process for validating the details of her personas and the

assumptions on the websites information architecture are explored by running

simulations (prototypes) of the clients website, and of situations that recreate the
applicable cognitive conditions that contribute to the users experience by using any
one of, or combination of user experience research methods. The methods available
to the UXD include a variety of primary research techniques: card sorting, where
users organize website topics written on index cards into categories that make
sense to them, eyetracking tests to observer where users look on the website when
they are experiencing cognitive stress, user diaries for insights into user
expectations as they navigate the website, and participatory design sessions where
users sketch out versions of the websites layout, interactions, and display of content
in a way that they believe will be most efficient for them.18
The UXD would test these methods under the same cadence for her usability
testing: in repetition to gather data on the most common manifestation of the users

17 Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella, Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web

(New York City: Pearson Education, 2009, 2 ed), 39-44.

18 Rohrer, When to Use Which User-Experience Research Method.

12

characteristics within the system.19 Tests and research methods may both be
segmented into scenarios and tested independently, with the use of scripts to
maintain conformity, and with hypothesis on the outcomes intended of each
scenario, where if proven true will validate an assumption on user behavior.20

The UXD presents the scenarios to decision-makers that best support a

growth in sales, along with the changes to the design that would need to be made in
order to meet those scenarios in real life, and explanations for why these changes
will have the impact that has been proposed and demonstrated through the
scenarios.21
The end result for the client is a website design that caters to the customers
according to their needs, perspectives, and the relevant use that they find in
interacting with the system in order to fulfill their needs.

The Benefits For Industry

The world today has been shaped by technology and those who guide that

technology for the development of a more effective means of commanding power

over information. Consumer industries in the United States and Western Europe
continue to explore new ways to access and analyze information, not only in an

19 Aaron Marcus, Design, User Experience, and Usability: User Experience Design for Everyday

Life Applications and Services (New York: Springer, 2014, 2014 edition), 344.
20 Jane Fulton Suri and Matthew Marsh, Scenario building as an ergonomics method in

consumer product design, Applied Ergonomic 31 (2000): 151-53.

21 Marcus, Design, User Experience, and Usability: User Experience Design for Everyday

Life Applications and Services, 346.

13

effort to gain a better understanding of their customers, but to develop newer, more
efficient means of engaging their customers.22
Corporations were among the first organizations to create identities on the
World Wide Web. They wasted no time in evolving their websites into service
devices that could interact with customers from their homes and to serve purposes
beyond only gathering information.23
The change from information-purposed websites in commerce to
interaction-purposed websites altered not only the way users could engage their
websites, but what they expected from the engagement to make purchases.2425

Funding has poured into the practice of user experience design and into the

commercial entities that have been the primary benefactors. The financing of the
UXD practice continues to grow today and has given user experience designers the
resources they need to create new tools for their work,26 to build databases of user

22 "More Than 80 Percent of Retailers Plan to Increase Their Customer Experience Spending

in 2015, According to New Survey from SDL and Econsultancy," SDL Press release, February
3, 2015, on the SDL website, http://bit.ly/1uJnaxd, accessed October 27, 2015.
23 "Huge Brands' Early Websites From The 1990s Looked Terrible," April 23, 2013, Business
Insider, accessed October 27, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/big-brands-90s-
websites-look-terrible-2013-4.
24Nielsen, Iterative User Interface Design, Nielsen Norman Group, November 1, 1993,
accessed October 27, 2015, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/.
25 Kirsten Boehner, Rogrio DePaula, Paul Dourish, and Phoebe Sengers, Affect: From
Information to Interaction, (paper presented at the Fourth Decennial Aarhus Conference
on Critical Computing, Aarthus, Denmark, August 20, 2005).
26 Cameron Chapman, Comprehensive Review of Usability And User Experience Testing
Tools, Smashing Magazine, October 20, 2011, accessed October 27, 2015,
http://bit.ly/1LXzgFH.

14

experience information for heuristic measures, and to develop institutions for the
further education of current and emerging UX designers.272829

The benefits of user experience design have spread outside the realm of

commerce to impact other industries. The medical industry has begun to invest in
user experience design to improve the usability of their equipment in hospitals, to
connect with patients more effectively, and to improve on methods to optimize the
use of their resources within the terms of a profit-making system.30 The banking and
finance industries have been pursuing a UX led competitive advantage within their
market of traders, analysts, and every person with a bank account by providing
instant access to information and presenting that information in a way that is most
efficient for the user, enabling their customers to make financial decisions quickly
and easily.31 Other organizations abroad have also begun to employ UXD to contend
with cultural elements that perpetrate social and economic challenges within
struggling populations.32 33 As the practice of user experience design continues to
spread and evolve, there is reason found to suggest that the UXD practices might be
useful for decision-makers working in crisis regions, combat zones, and the meeting

27 IBM Commits $100 Million to Globally Expand Unique Consulting Model That Fuses

Strategy, Data and Design, IBM Corp, accessed October 27, 2015. https://www-
03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43523.wss.
28 Marcus, Return on investment for usable design, white paper, April 1, 2002. Marcus and
Associates Inc, 9, 12.
29 Steve Olenski, All About User Experiences: 5 Ways It Can Improve Your Website's
Conversion, Forbes, May 12, 2015, accessed October 27, 2015, http://onforb.es/1ExNIkh.
30 Neil Versel, Hospitals Focus On Patient Experience Through Design, U.S. News,
September 25, 2014, accessed October 27, 2015, http://bit.ly/1t22lWo.
31 James Eyers, Why banks are thinking design, Australian Financial Review, June 21, 2015,
accessed October 27, 2015, http://bit.ly/1LvuYGx.
32UX For Good, accessed October 27, 2015, www.uxforgood.com.
33 Julie Rodriguez and Matt Hull, Can UX Deliver 1000% ROI?, Information Week,
November 21, 2013, accessed October 27, 2015, http://ubm.io/1RAw9XP.

15

rooms of military-political affairs, just as it has been beneficial for the decision-
makers of industries before them.

Earlier Methods and Criticism

Ida Hoos spotted a problem inherent in the application of systems analysis

methods like Planning Programming and Budgeting Systems to public policy. Hoos
in her book Systems Analysis in Public Policy; a Critique poses challenges that are
relevant to the practice of user experience design, as it may be just another failed or
highly flawed attempt to apply a one-size-fits-all method meant to manage data, but
not in a manner that encompasses all relevant human interactions.34

Hoos referenced studies that detail the pros and cons associated with the

application of information analysis principles from the fields of analysis and

engineering. According to Hoos, the instructions to implement such principles in a
public policy setting are too vague, offering little to no rules of guidance and lacking
the restraint of clear definitions that would provide a sound rationale for selecting
goals and performance measurements. Hoos claims that the goals and
measurements as determined through formula by systems analysis will frequently
disregard actual human interests and are therein misaligned from the projects
stated goals.35
An over dependence on what can be calculated numerically at the expense of what
should be understood (behavior) has caused systems analysts in the past to turn a

34 Hoos, Systems Analysis in Public Policy; a Critique, 38, 244 248.
35 Ibid, 245.

16

blind eye to the impact of human response, producing solutions that often lead to
more problems.36

In the world of online commerce today, this method of systems analysis

could fail to achieve desired and predicted results. In a broad application of the
method: a website designed with only the systems concerns in mind, i.e. sell more
pants, will find that their solutions failed to consider the critical social element in
this goal - the customers wanting to buy the pants. Take, for example, a retail
organization conducting a study of their customers who want to redeem coupons
through the companys website:
The study reveals that 45% of customers attempting to redeem
coupons on the companys website fail; the customers leave the
website without redeeming their coupons. 85% of these
abandonments happen after the customers navigate from the
home page to the websites redemption page by clicking the link
labeled Redeem Coupons, which is displayed on the home page.
Lastly, 100% of the customers who are abandoning on this
redemption page never even clicked the image with the dollar
symbol and the words Click to Redeem.
These insights are the result of the analysis of the quantifiable findings
by systems analysis.
A system analyst pinpoints the problem: customers are not seeing the
target image. The wise analyst refers to Fittss law37 to explain it,

36 Ibid, 246.

17
informing the companys decision-makers that the image is simply too
small and fails to catch the customers attention. A measured increase
in size will result in a measured increase in successful clicks, taking the
number of successful redemptions from 45% to 95% (+/- 15%).

It would not be uncommon for a novice UXD to take this information into

account to reach the same conclusion as the analyst, and possibly even recommend
a similar solution. A seasoned UXD would be confronting just another broken user
experience however, and would first consider the pages design in context to the
human-interaction heuristics that affect this kind of user experience. The UXD
would not be led to calculate an answer, instead, as the novice should have done
before assuming an answer, the UXD will ask the most logical question: why do the
customers fail to see the Click to Redeem image?

The seasoned UXD would see a common problem on the redemption page, a

user experience determinable problem, non-calculable, and only observable with

some acumen in qualitative analysis in the context of web design. The problem
affecting the user experience is known as banner blindness.38

In human-computer interactions, users viewing a webpage have adopted a

reaction from ever-present advertisements that allow them to filter out any content
that is shaped like, or shares other aesthetic qualities of an advertisement, from

37Paul Fitts. "Fitts's Law," The Interaction Design Foundation, 1954, accessed October 27,

2015, http://bit.ly/1LXJTIP.
38 Nielsen, Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings, Nielsen Norman Group, August 20,

2007, accessed on October 28, 2015, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-

old-and-new-findings/.

18

cognitive reception.39 A tremendous amount of evidence on the occurrence of

banner blindness has been gathered by the Nielsen Norman Group, dating back to
1997, and has been reaffirmed as recently as 2015 as a regular occurrence in user
behavior with web design.40 Although the process seems to be counterintuitive, as a
bigger and louder element on a webpage naturally would seem to draw attention, it
is actually a commonly known phenomenon in the UXD field that users will continue
to disregard the element, regardless of how big it gets. 41

The sales loss from the 45% rate of abandonment would be utilized by the

UXD as part of the proposal to advocate specific design changes. In this way, the
objective to retain customers for coupon redemptions on the companys website
would be accomplished by changing the element out for one that hopefully provides
the proper customer response: cognitive attention to the element, understanding
the element, and clicking on it to redeem their coupons, as the heuristics of effective
interface design would suggest.42 UXD guides analysts toward the appropriate
questions to ask about their customers state of mind, expectations, and how these
cognitive defaults differ under various sets of needs and exposure to stimuli.

In a military-political setting, a systems analyst may guide decision-makers

poorly as they analyze the quantitative data that describe a system and its users
activities. The user experience designer will work to understand the social element

39 Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability (New York: New Riders, 2006), 76.
40 Nielsen, Banner Blindness.
41 Ibid.

42 Nielsen, 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design, Nielsen Norman Group, January 1, 1995,

accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/.

19

as it contends with the system and use that knowledge to inform the direction of
system resources.43
The user experience design practice resembles another approach to managing
users within systems. This approach relies on the use of propaganda and
manipulation; a study and play on human motives and reactions within a context of
use, and then the altering of those motives and reactions to benefit the interest of
the systems utilizer. This is the method of B.F. Skinners behavior modification
theory.44
B.F. Skinners assertion as it applies to user experience design is that all
motivational characteristics of the user are derived from the environment in which
the user is interacting. His theory proposes that by understanding the users
personalities, states of mind, feelings, character traits, plans, purposes, and
intentions, the system designer will be able discern what elements in the system are
developing these behavioral characteristics within the users. Skinners approach
assumes that users do not harbor their motivating characteristics independently of
the system, that the users behavioral characteristics are entirely the result of the
experiences with interaction elements within the system.
Charles Perrow commented on Skinners model in his book Complex
Organizations: A Critical Essay, pointing out that successful applications of this

43 Marcus, Design, User Experience, and Usability, 344.
44 Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

Company Inc., 2002), Introduction.

20

model have sometimes been based on ambiguous situations where a variety of

uncontrolled factors could be operating to produce the effects45.
Noam Chomskys criticism of Skinners theory in his New Yorker article, The
Case Against B.F. Skinner, highlights the improper and pointless endeavor to access
the inter-locus mechanism of actual human behavior in a bid to manipulate people
to ends desired by the systems controllers.46 Chomsky regards Skinners process as
misguided and dismissive of a human nature; someone will always break the mold
by reacting unpredictably in a system. The disturbance in the system is the result of
actual free will or sheer caprice or behavior based within a competing system.
What differentiates user experience design from Skinners behavior
modification model is the user experience designers recognition of user
characteristics as autonomous motives. Also, Skinners approach to leverage
information against users as a device for manipulation contradicts the UXDs
approach to use information as a guide for designing a more efficient experience. In
the UXD practice, system elements are changed for the benefit of the user, because a
happy user is often a happy customer who will likely return to the system (website)
for repeat experiences.47
If a designer conspired to manipulate users by exploiting the discovery of
characteristics that motivate their actions, they would likely find that some users
are successfully manipulated by one set of means, yet others will not be, and still

45 Charles Perrow, Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, (Brattleboro, Vermont: Echo

Point Books & Media, 2014), 96.

46 Noam Chomsky, The Case Against B.F. Skinner, The New York Review of Books,

December 30, 1971.

47 Marcus, Design, User Experience, and Usability, 344.

21

another set of users will react unpredictably outside of any assessment, and
continue to do so irrespective of the system. 48
The UXD is not aiming to discover the most efficient means of manipulating
any human being into a prescribed response; the user experience designer is
working to identify users who already have a stake in the system that the decision-
maker intends to affect, and then provide those users with the elements they need
to inform and empower them to take action and pursue their needs within the
system. The end goal is not success; it is return service a lasting relationship
between the user and the system that encourages the users to engage the system for
their needs. The system itself adapts and evolves continuously to provide users with
what they need in a way that is most efficient for them and for the system.

Case Study: Iraq, 2003- 2004

In the years building up to the conflict between Iraq and The United States,

and since after the invasion of Iraq by US forces on March 19th, 2003, decisions
were made that failed to be productive in pursuing the joint American-Iraqi interest
of maintaining congenial national stability. The decision-makers responsible were
actors in the realms of both politics and warfare. My case study examines the
decisions that were made to secure a favorable (To the US) form of stability of the
Iraqi region, but instead resulted in the rise of an insurgency from the spring of
2003 through the fall of 2004 and onwards. The impact of these decisions and the
reasons that the decisions were made are proposed by various references

48 Chomsky, The Case Against B.F. Skinner.

22

representing various sentiments toward both the war and the Bush Administration
in charge of it.

Whatever the opinion, the Bush Administrations efforts failed to achieve its

interests in Iraq, and in examining professional assessments of the decisions made

both in Washington and on the ground in Iraq, what becomes empirically clear is
that the misuse of information, or in some instances, the willful denial of
information, was a factor of many bad decisions.49 50
The war began with a decision that was made on March 17th, by the Bush
Administration to give Saddam Hussein and his two sons an ultimatum: leave Iraq
within 48 hours or the bombing of Baghdad will commence.
Saddam and his sons did not leave Iraq. They remained in the country until
they were eventually found and killed after the US invasion, or in Saddams case,
executed.51

US forces stormed into Iraq to descend upon Baghdad after a short but

intense campaign of air strikes that successfully decimated the majority of Iraqs
defenses. Less than a month later, on April 9th, a United States victory in Baghdad
was celebrated across international media with some poignant photos of US
Marines uniting with Iraqi citizens in Firdos Square to remove a statue of Saddam
Hussein. Soon after the celebratory event in Firdos Square came to a close,

49 Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of

War (New York: Simon & Schuster, Reprint edition, 2014), 24450.
50 John Keegan, The Iraq War: The Military Offensive, from Victory in 21 Days to the Insurgent

Aftermath (New York: Vintage, 2005), 81-84.

51 Jesse Singal, Christine Lim and M.J. Stephey, Seven Years in Iraq: An Iraq War Timeline,

Time Magazine, March 19, 2010, accessed October 28, 2015,

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1967340_1967342,00.ht
ml.

23

lawlessness began to spread throughout Iraq. Looting, assault, and vandalism

became widespread.52
President Bush declared an official end to major combat operations in Iraq on May
1st, 2003.53

Saddams regime and his Ba'ath party had been defeated, but within one

month following President Bushs declaration that major combat operations in Iraq
were officially over, more than 50 US soldiers had been killed.54 Two months later
on August 19th, a truck bomb drove into the United Nations headquarters in
Baghdad, killing 17 people. No group claimed responsibility for this attack, and in
the weeks following, the UN and other aid workers pulled out of Iraq as the country
began to descend into a state of civil war and aggressive resistance against the
presence of US personnel.55

The world was beginning to wonder whether or not this war was actually

over, and if it wasnt, what kind of war it was going to become.56 Many people were
asking a lot of questions after the curtain had dropped on the war in Iraq. Some
critics proposed that the politicians had been lying to the general public all along
about the state of affairs in Iraq, others claimed that the Bush Administration was
simply too obtuse to notice that their plans were falling apart. Undeniably, the
wrong decisions were being made and the administrations objectives were not
being met. The news of US ground engagements expressed an ill preparedness

52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq

(Westminster: Penguin Books, 2010), 52.

55 Singal, Seven Years In Iraq.
56 Ricks, The Gamble, 59-61.

24

among the troops to effectively execute both military solutions with hostile
elements and political solutions with friendly or neutral elements.57

The information that was being used to encourage these decisions comes into

question naturally as one would ask: Why did this happen? Reports, papers, power
point presentations, and peer collaboration were the means used to convey the
ideas that influenced the decisions made by the policy makers and military shot-
callers.58 So then, what kind of assessments were being made, why were they wrong,
and considering how long we have been engaged in international contention with
Iraq, how far back do the incorrect assessments go?

Consider one assessment on the potential for civil war in Iraq that was

proposed as early as 2001, and delivered with as much confidence as any other
assessment could be presented at the time. The authors William F. Donaher and
Ross B. DeBlois, in their article Is the Current UN and US Policy toward Iraq
Effective, published in Parameters in 2001, analyzed the state of US policy toward
Iraq during the Oil-For-Food initiative. They incorrectly reject the notion that
opposition forces could empower themselves well enough to incite civil war in Iraq:
A takeover by Iraq's opposition parties seems extremely unlikely. The most
credible groups in this mix of opposition are the Kurds, the Shiite of various
hues--including liberal democrats and secularists, moderate Islamists, and
Islamic fundamentalists--and Sunni Arab nationalists. They could succeed only

57 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 151.
58 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 218.

25
if they formed a lasting coalition that would constitute a dramatic break with
Iraq's 70-year history of domination by the center and Sunni Arabs.59

Donaher and Deblois proposed that Iraqs opposition parties were too

divided to create either a combined or individual threat. The notion suggests that
the ability of opposition parties to pose a real threat of insurgency would have been
highly unlikely, as the political elements within Iraq would still remain divided, if
not more so after the invasion. Today, we know that this articles assessment of
Iraqs segregated social-political element is widely off the mark. The social climate
of Iraq could, and did, change drastically in the three years after this argument was
published.

Bad information infecting political decision-making is nothing new. Although,

if the assessments taken into consideration by those decision-makers are found to

be fundamentally unsubstantiated, the question of what provoked the Bush
Administrations decisions for Iraq persists. Fred Kaplan, and Thomas Ricks, in their
books, respectively, The Insurgents, and The Gamble, provide details of how
unreliable assessments were weighed by the Bush Administration.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and President

Bush were well aware of arguments advocating postwar planning with the
engagement of the COIN recommended procedures: Clear, Hold, Build, but it was

59 William F. Donaher and Ross B. DeBlois, Is the Current UN and US Policy toward Iraq

Effective?, Parameters, January 17, 2001, 112-25, accessed October 28, 2015.
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/01winter/donaher.ht
m.

26

the Build part of the equation that Rumsfeld felt was necessary to cut out of the
plan.60

Rumsfelds concern was not just over Iraq but the whole of the nations

global entanglements and its need to access resources for future military
engagements.61 A full-scale dedication of US resources to a long-term commitment
to hold multiple regions within Iraq was an option the Bush Administration felt the
country could not likely afford, and they were confident that invading Iraq and
expelling the Ba'ath Party Regime from the country would not require our military
to manage a plan to hold regions for the long-term, because that would require post-
war reconstruction to stabilize each region being held.62This is what they wanted to
believe, and surely they were given enough encouragement to believe it by generals,
politicians, and intelligence sources who provided assessments supporting this
approach, yet they were also exposed to an equal measure of assessments
contradicting these ideals.
Several such assessments that advocated contradicting approaches to one-
another will be examined more closely later in this section.

There was an assumption that whatever would happen, the US could handle

it and that the chances of making it not the US's problem but instead Iraqs problem,
would be high, and the chances of violent reactions to our troops given our
reputation upon invasion, would be low. It was a vague assessment, but the only one
that the Bush Administration was prepared to embrace against a flood of

60 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 3-5, 68.
61 Ibid, 68-69.
62 Ibid, 71.

27

contradicting speculations professing the dire importance of planning for such a

reconstruction phase; speculations that many felt could be repudiated as little more
than broad references to military engagements fought in different eras and for
different reasons.63 The Bush Administration was not ignorant of the fact that
something would happen if they ignored phase IV, but since what would happen
was going to be part of another string of speculative assessments and reports, the
option could not be properly considered, so it was simply disregarded.64

The ability to assess complex social elements is an important factor for

making decisions in the military-political arena. During the Bush Administrations

era, the nature of the assessments used to inform decision-makers on the state of
Iraq was often, at best, expert speculation, lacking in dependability and
comprehensibility, leaving most assessments to be considered with some degree of
skepticism.65 In many cases these assessments amounted to philosophical
arguments built upon shaky facts.66 This was and is the nature of assessments
affecting decisions on policy and war today as well, and even if one assessment
supported by real facts and sound reasoning were to surface among the stacks, the
mentality employed upon it by those who read it would, and do,67 render the good
assessments just as dismissible as the bad ones.

The Administrations acceptance of suspect assessments to support their

decisions begs the question: did they even have access or want access- to

63 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 196.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid, 201.
66 Ricks, The Gamble, 217.
67 Nielsen, Mental Models, Nielsen Norman Group, October 18, 2010, accessed October 28,

2015, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/.

28

assessments that were supported with substantive evidence in the first place? In
retrospect it may seem very easy to answer affirmative on this question, but in the
moment where a decision-maker is watching their presumptions fall apart, and the
reality of the elements to be weighed are still obscured by a fog of war, access to
good information becomes more a question of whether or not the decision-maker
has the means to identify the good information over the bad, and if those means are
a reliable measure.68

The decision-makers on the ground in Iraq had to contend with the same

questions, and the poor decisions made in Washington brought a backlash down
upon their efforts. The situation in Iraq appeared to decline in tandem with the
decline of public confidence in the Administrations capability to handle the war,
and the pressure this placed upon military decision-makers in Iraq only served to
increase the frequency to which they made bad decisions on the ground. Many
decision-makers on the ground in Iraq found their hands tied, they knew that they
should be doing one thing to secure their missions interests but they were forced by
policy passed down from command to do something else. As the resulting impact
from these decisions worsened and the overall objective of stability seemed to grow
only further out of reach, the priority of many commanders shifted from a vague
mission of stability to a mission of survival for the soldiers under their command.

68 Thomas Tullis, Bill Albert and William Albert, Measuring the User Experience: Collecting,

Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics (Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann, 1 edition, 2008),
8, 23-24.

29

The information needed to make the right decisions for ground engagements

was there, but bad information supporting poorly chosen strategies of how to
engage the different elements in Iraq had superseded it.69

US forces began to pull out of Fallujah within a few months of having initially

taken the city, leaving control in the hands of the local authority. The withdrawal of
US forces attracted the attention of insurgent elements that recognized an
opportunity. The support from US forces that the Iraqi people were depending on
was rarely present when the insurgents came to intimidate them. The insurgents,
unchecked, began spreading general havoc across the city, gaining a foothold among
supporters and setting local resistance back on its heels.70

One year after the invasion of Iraq, indiscriminate attacks on police and city

officials resulted in unprecedented casualties among US supporters. Local Iraqi

police and The Iraqi Civil Defense Corp was beginning to lose control of Fallujah. As
US and Iraqi control over the city faltered, the insurgents organized plans to push
the existing US presence within and around Fallujah far out from the city, far enough
to effectively cut off Fallujah from American influence.71

Less than a year after the celebration of Saddams collapse from power

in Firdos Square, and after months of failing stability and increasing terrorist
attacks in Iraqs cities, the population began to turn on US forces. The rapid
decline of the US forces relationship with their civilian Iraqi supporters

69 Kaplan, The Insurgents 58-59.
70 Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation, (New York: Verso, 2007), 135-41.
71 Ricks, The Gamble, 28-29.

30

correlated with the rise in frequency of hostile engagements and the brutal
demonstrations of hate for the United States that inspired them.

On March 31, 2004, insurgent forces in Iraq from the Brigades of Martyr

Ahmed Yassin ambushed a convoy that was transporting four American private
military contractors, who were in charge of guarding kitchen supplies for a military
base, and killed them in a public display of unchecked hatred and aggression.
The four contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona
and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set
ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets
before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.72

The Independent, April 2004.

The political pressure for a US response to the killings instigated an

impulsive response from Washington, Operation Vigilant Resolve. US Marines

surrounded the city in a bid to capture the insurgents who were responsible for the
gruesome execution of the four American contractors and anyone associated with
the growing insurgency. The Iraqi National Guard was included to support the US
Marines during the assault, but they abandoned their post and discarded their
uniforms on the morning that the siege was set to begin. The Marines moved in
without the support of the Iraqi forces and with no time to replace them. Soon after
the initial assault, the Iraqi Governing Council pressured the US to abandon the siege
of Fallujah and withdrawal their Marines. The US Marines eventually abandoned the

72 Robert Fisk, Atrocity in Fallujah, The Independent, April 1, 2004, accessed October 28,

2015, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5974.htm.

31

siege. 40 Marines died during the attack. Iraqi casualties were broadly estimated to
be between 250 and 750 deaths, mostly civilians.73

The loss of Fallujah one year after the U.S. invasion provoked a need within

the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take a hard look at Iraq. To some, there appeared to be a
counterinsurgency issue brewing in the works that had not been properly assessed.
When U.S. forces pulled out of the city of Fallujah and set up shop in their own
forward operation command centers, they had effectively abandoned the city to its
own devices, engaging minimally in measures to improve the quality of life of the
civilian population. As a result, the reputation of occupying US forces suffered, and
the militarys direct line of support from locals who were once helping to secure the
city began to disappear. 74

Dexter Filkins, in his book The Forever War, describes what happened to

the Iraqis who positively engaged the US presence to pursue stability:

People ask me what happened in Iraq, and I tell them the story of
Wijdan al-Khuzai. Iraq might have been a traumatized country, it might
have been broken, it might have been atomizedit might have been a
mental hospital. But whenever the prospect of normalcy presented itself, a
long line of Iraqis always stood up and reached for itAnd they went to the
slaughter. Thousands and thousands of them: editors, pamphleteers,
judges and police officers, and women like Wijdan al-Khuzai. The

73Anne Barnard, "Death toll near 500 in Fallujah, Baghdad, The Boston Globe, April 4, 2004,

accessed October 28, 2015,

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/04/22/death_toll_near_500_in_falluj
ah_baghdad/.
74 Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (New York: Vintage, 2009), 130.

32
insurgents were brilliant at that. They could spot a fine mind or a tender
soul wherever it might be, chase it down and kill it dead. The heart of a
nation. The precision was astounding.75

The speculations on civil instability had to be reexamined as tensions rose in

the region; the withdraw of US forces from the nations cities had clearly
destabilized the region and disturbed the alliances that were created early on.
Collapse under the pressure of local insurgency elements had become a reality. New
alliances would be difficult to forge because insurgents had tortured to death the
previous supporters along with most of their families. The perception and actions of
the Iraqi people toward US forces had suddenly changed, they no longer felt the US
could work with them to achieve stability and they felt justified in aiming blame at
the Bush Administration for the poorly planned invasion of their country:
Why vote at all? I asked Saadi. Why not just stay home? She shot me a
withering look. I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by
its enemies, she said. She spoke English without an accent. What enemies? I
asked Saadi. What enemies are you referring to? She began to tremble. You
you destroyed our country, Saadi said. The Americans, the British. I am sorry
to be impolite. But you destroyed our country, and you called it democracy.
Democracy, she said, it is just talking.76

Throughout the wars descent into confusion and mayhem, professional

assessments, reviews, and articles continued to support the decision to avoid a

reconstruction phase in Iraq. Many of these assessments legitimized the

75 Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, 212-14.
76 Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, 236.

33

administrations decision against reconstruction with fair rationalization and

experiential merit. Colonel Gian P. Gentile made such assessments. He brought with
him the acumen and field experience to support his assertions with a real sense of
credibility. Gentile also contributed to the writing of the militarys most recent
manuals on managing counterinsurgency efforts, including COINs own General
Petraeus work within the Army Field Manuals doctrine on counterinsurgency
tactics.

His retrospective analysis of the militarys use of COIN tactics to contend

with postwar Iraq was published in the 2009 autumn issue of Parameters, long after
the US invasion of Iraq had concluded. Gentile observes that for The Bush
Administration to give itself over to the approach prescribed by COIN for Phase IV
operations, they would have forgone strategy by limiting their options to the tactical
approaches within the guidelines of COIN procedure:
If strategy calls for nation-building as an operational method to achieve
policy objectives, and it is resourced correctly, then the population-centric
approach might make sense. But because the United States has
principilized population-centric COIN into the only way of doing any kind
of counterinsurgency, it dictates strategy.

Gentiles final point is that committing to nation building could be a real

threat to our forces abroad. There exists the possibility of the stagnation of real
military activity, preparedness, and discipline within our militarys ranks when
units are dedicated to nation building for too long. To support his claim, Gentile

34

refers to the experience of the Israeli Defense Forces during their engagements with
Lebanon in 2008:77
There were many reasons for [The Israeli Defense Forces] failure, but
one of them, as validated by scholars and analysts, is that its army had
done almost nothing but COIN in the Palestinian territories, and its ability
to fight against a strident enemy had atrophied. During the past few
months a number of studies have been published on Israels 2008
operations in Gaza. What these reports show is that the Israeli military,
especially its army, realized what had happened to them in Lebanon and
took the intervening two years to get back to the basics of war fighting;
critical competencies such as synchronizing fire, maneuver, and
intelligence at all levels of command against a hostile force. The American
Army would do well to pay attention to what the Israeli army has
undergone in the past two years.

Gentile insists that following the widely recommended approach of

committing to more ground engagements to support stability, both political and

militarily, will backfire as US forces find themselves sapped of their fighting
potential, and embedded in a costly endless struggle abroad.78 Gentiles further
assessments included a prediction for our engagement in Iraq; a prediction that has
not yet been derailed by current events, now six years further into the war:

77 Gian P. Gentile, A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army, Strategic

Studies Institute, 116-27, November 11, 2009, accessed October 28, 2015,
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/09autumn/gentile.pdf
.
78 Ibid, 118.

35
Strategy is about choice, options, and the wisest use of resources in war
to achieve political objectives. Yet in the new way of American war, tactics
have buried strategy, and it precludes any options other than an endless
and likely futile struggle to achieve the loyalty of populations that, in the
end, may be peripheral to American interests.

The 2015 March/April issue of The Foreign Affairs Councils publication,

Foreign Affairs Magazine, features an article by James F. Jeffrey that proposes an

alternative view for why over-engaging in COIN related activities, like enacting
Phase IV of the COIN doctrines protocol, could produce adverse conditions in Iraq
that would only serve to escalate the problem, and in what way the country should
have considered its options differently.

In his article Why Counterinsurgency Doesnt Work, Jeffrey points out that

if Washingtons original goal was to transform Iraq in such a way that Baghdad
could govern competently, quell the nations insurgencies, and develop functional,
Western-style institutions, then Washington was destined to fail. Jeffreys
assessment asserts that the unknowable cost of such long-term engagements is
more than the effort is worth. Waging any kind of campaign against a determined
counterinsurgency could entrap our military forces in a situation that could last for
decades, costing thousands of lives and more money than could ever be justified for
the sacrifice.79

79 James F. Jeffrey, Why Counterinsurgency Doesnt Work, The Council on Foreign

Relations, April, 2015, accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.cfr.org/united-states/why-

counterinsurgency-doesnt-work/p36155.

36
The author suggests that when a nation is confronted with a

counterinsurgency campaign, decision-makers should look very closely at the

details of the engagement and consider some difficult options before committing to
war:
When political leaders give the Pentagon broad goals of social

transformation in the guise of Phase IV stability operations, they

undermine support for even legitimate, low-cost military missions, such as
an air campaign in Syria. Counterinsurgency was a recipe for defeat and
retrenchment in the recent past, just as it was in the 1970s and will be
again.

The strategy Jeffreys proposes for confronting these circumstances is

for US forces to support friendly local forces from outside the combat zone, if
that cannot be done to affect a desirable result, decision-makers should accept
the consequences of a victorious insurgency and refocus their energy on
containing its spread and protecting their allies.80

In contrast to the previous assessments, many articles and books supporting

the adoption of Phase IV initiatives were presented in Washington as well. These

arguments appeared to carry just as much weight in reason, caution, and
justification as the contradicting assessments that they contended with. They also
carried with them the growing feeling of venomous criticisms over the war and the
decisions of the Bush Administration during its onset.

80 Ibid.

37
In Thomas Rickss book Fiasco, the author posits accountability and

speculates on the mistakes that were made during and after the U.S. invasion of
Iraq:81
The run-up to the war is particularly significant because it also laid the
shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed. While the Bush
administrationand especially Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and L.
Paul Bremer IIIbear much of the responsibility for the mishandling of
the occupation in 2003 and early 2004, blame also must rest with the
leadership of the U.S. military, who didnt prepare the U.S. Army for the
challenge it faced, and then wasted a year by using counterproductive
tactics that were employed in unprofessional ignorance of the basic tenets
of counter-insurgency warfare.

Fred Kaplan expresses a similar assessment in his book The Insurgents,

while he is illustrating the experience of General George Casey arriving in Iraq in

May of 2004, as the newly appointed commander of the US forces in Iraq to take
control of the counterinsurgency problem:82
It took Casey little time, and no prompting from experts, to figure out
that Iraq was in shambles and so was the war. His predecessor had left
him nothing to build on. Not only was there no counterinsurgency plan,
there was no plan of any sort: no strategy, no mission statement, no

81 Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Wesminster: Penguin Group,

2006), 4.
82 Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents, 96.

38
criteria or benchmarks for how to measure, or even define, success or
failure.

While Colonel Gentile was writing his assessment on the US forces approach

in Iraq, in A Strategy of Tactics, he attempted to contend with the words of

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV, the American Army general charged with
writing the Armys doctrine in 2007:83
The future is not one of major battles and engagements fought by armies
on battlefields devoid of population; instead, the course of conflict will be
decided by forces operating among the people of the world. Here, the
margin of victory will be measured in far different terms than the wars of
our past. The allegiance, trust, and confidence of populations will be the
final arbiters of success.

Caldwells assessment of the conflict and what the correct course of action

may be came to light with the weight of other experts who supported the same
adherence to COIN doctrine. He addressed the counterinsurgency question with the
experience of a counterinsurgency combatant, just like his critics, and his proposal
was delivered with the same adamant voice of assurance and urgency as his critics
assessments.
In his book The Insurgents, Fred Kaplan references the experience of
retired General Huba Wass de Czege, during his participation in the Vigilant

83 Gentile, A Strategy of Tactics, 120.

39

Warrior war game held in the spring of 2002, at the Army War College in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania.84

The war game employed several officers both active-duty and retired. They

were divided into two teams, the Blue Team and the Red Team. The Blue Team
represented the US forces and the Red Team represented the enemy. The games
commanding officers constructed the scenarios and refereed the moves. Vigilant
Warrior was a war game intended to simulate the experience of combat with an
enemy of Middle-eastern origin- a clear means of preparation for the upcoming
conflict with Iraq.85

The Blue Team participating in Vigilant Warrior won, but Wass de Czege

had concerns. While participating in the game as a commanding officer of the Blue
Team, Wass de Czege surmised that the scenario skirted the main concern related to
their anticipated engagement in Iraq.86

Kaplan summarizes the key points of a memo written by Wass de Czege that

had circulated through the Armys command after the war games:
[Wass de Czege] noted that these games tend to devote more attention to
successful campaign-beginnings than to successful conclusions. They
usually conclude when victory seems inevitable to us (not necessarily to
the enemy). But winning a war didnt mean simply defeating the enemy on
the battlefield; it meantachieving the strategic goals for which the war
was fought in the first place. Winning battles is important, but it is just as

84 Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents, 56-58.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid, 58.

40
important to know how to follow through to the resolution of such
conflicts.

Kaplan goes on to point out that if the games managers had followed

through and kept playing after the enemys army had been defeated, they might
have realized that they were underestimating the challenges that lay ahead in
confronting a regime change and the effort that could be required to manage it.87

Kaplan closes on a noteworthy sentiment:

Grasping these [challenges], and overcoming them, would require a
change in strategy and the ascension of a different type of strategist.

The Practical Application of User Experience Design for the

Military-Political Arena

The means to discern good information from bad information does not really

exist by the credibility of experienced and meticulously educated authors of

assessments. Although their credibility lends them reason to be heard, this fact does
not address the problem that equally credible authors will stand in direct opposition
to one-another, leaving decision-makers with no real means of discerning the right
decision from all of the good information provided.

There is no existing study to date that could be referenced as a proof for the

successful application of user experience design to present better options to

military-political decision makers. Until that time, this thesis can only be a

87 Ibid, 60.

41

speculation on UXDs possible application and, hopefully, serve to properly express

the real potential offered by the UXD practice for the information analysis needs of
the US military-political system.

The application of user experience designing, simulation testing, and

information analysis is a considerable apparatus for decision-makers in the

military-political arena. The UXD practice contends to provide clarity, rendering
the complexity of social elements comprehensible, and to provide access to
comprehensible proofs to support assessments in a new, more substantiated and
comparable format for decision-makers. To accomplish this task, the UXD would
engage in secondary and primary research methods to identify and understand the
actors who are able to make the decisions that both affect the decision-maker and
the region itself.

Research would include historic reviews, current analyses of local influences

affecting the system, and close collaboration with thought-leaders who have
considerable experience with both the actors and the region. To contend with the
complexity of the system, the UXD could effectively employ the use of personas.

In a vague sense, the information that the UXD would gain by creating the

personas would explain why each of the actors react the way that they do to change
in their region, and how their reactions are of interest to the decision-maker.88

The UXD would use the personas in conjunction with an understanding of the

region and the decision-makers interests in the region to identify significant

88 Rex Hartson and Pardha Pyla, The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality

User Experience (Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann, 2012), 267.

42

influences within the region, and understand the effect these influences are having
on the various actors of the region.

The architecture of influential elements in the region would be mapped by

the UXD in a way similar to how the UXD would map a system for a corporate client.
The IA would illustrate the taxonomy of choices that are available within the region,
where in the region the choices can take place for any actor, what set of counter-
choices will result for the actor, and how the actors perceptions impact these
results, their future choices, and the region.89

The next concern for the UXD would be the designing of simulations to

confirm the interactions hypothesized from the examinations of the personas and
the architecture of influences in the region.90 Whatever the actors do and however
the actors do it would be associated to what the actors were feeling and thinking. If
the persona is correct, the actors behavior in the scenarios will play out as assumed
and produce results as predicted.91 Adjustments to assumptions, both on the IA and
the personas would be pursued until the UXDs tests confirm that correct
assumptions are being made.

Simulations would be segmented into scenarios and tested individually

according to scripts, with predicted outcomes to each event.92 The kind of user
experience tests to be implemented, and the degree of fidelity, or reality, of the
simulations would depend on the same project restraints that confront UXDs
working in the consumer industry: scope of time and the availability of resources.

89 Ibid, 343-51.
90 Ibid, 264-72.
91 91 Ibid, 428-29.
92 Ibid, 372-73.

43

Tests would be run multiple times to confirm the reliability of the scenarios
outcomes, assumed cost, and likely impact for the decision-maker and the region.93

Designing simulations, scenarios, and testing for the military-political

decision-makers will require the ability to produce testing environments quickly,

cheaply, and to use them effectively. This is an aspect of the application of user
experience design that would need to be refined through study and experience.
A user experience designers use of information analysis to inform the
decision-making process for military and political leaders during the US-Iraq war of
2003 may have helped to direct the administrations understanding of the options
presented to them before committing to invasion. By doing so, they could have made
better, more informed decisions all along the way. In retrospect, an initial invasion
of Iraq would turn out to be unquestionably successfully. The purpose for the UXD
then would be to determine the weight of responsibility that would rest on US forces
in charge of stabilizing a post-war Iraq. To do this, the UXD would demonstrate to
decision-makers the most probable results for various, pre-planned engagements in
Iraq. In effect, the information presented in the assessments that would guide our
nations post-war decisions in Iraq would be the subject of analysis.
As a resource to the US political-military decision-makers, The UXDs
responsibility is to examine the proposals on what the civil and military responses
to US forces are thought to be by the experts advising our decision-makers, then to
identify the deciding factors stated in the assessments and set to testing them
against the US objective of stabilization.

93 Ibid, 630.

44
The user experience designers practice of user experience testing is most

often applied to systems in the industry of commerce, where the users approach to
engaging elements within the system is independent, and cannot be controlled by
the UXD; it is up to the UXD to change the system elements so that they will work
with the users independent expectations to guide the user through the system in a
way that best suits the business objectives and the users goals.

In the case of applying this practice to the military-political arena, the user is

not independent, the user is the subject and the client, so the user can be told what
approach to take when engaging system elements. The user is the US forces,
represented by personnel on live-exercise training fields, and this means that the
UXD is not limited to exploring just how the system elements need to change to
meet the users goals, but is also able to explore different ways for the user to
engage these elements, and in doing so change their function within the system.
Indeed, it can be safely assumed that under these conditions the UXD will have more
ability to influence the users approach than to change the way the system elements
interact with the user.

In this case of application, the user experience designer will be testing not

only the validity of assessments proposed to decision-makers on the characteristics

and assumed reactions of social elements within Iraq, but also to test the validity of
proposals on how the user (US forces) should best approach these elements in effort
to meet the joint objective-goal of stability.
The assumptions being tested are those selected from the most plausible and
credible assessments of the best approaches for US forces in this system. Scenarios

45

reflecting the conditions proposed by the assessments are run multiple times under
the same hypothesis for results, with a rotation of commanders determining both
the actions of US forces and the reactions of the social elements that they engage.
The social elements are acting under motivations that are ideally an accurate
reflection of the qualitative characteristics of the actual inhabitants in that region.
As testing and real-life experiences with the social element progress, assumptions
on these characteristics will come into light, bad hypotheses are adjusted and tested
again, and successful hypotheses on the system element reactions are verified along
with the now-known outcome (results) and the corresponding approaches by the
user that triggered the reaction. This process gives the UXD the means to gauge the
probability of a hypothesis to manifest under real conditions by sampling the results
of simulation scenarios that have been tested multiple times, with each set of tests
under a selection of conditions reflecting the motivational advantages of system
elements to be engaged by the user.
Just as it stands for usability testing in consumer industries, the process for
these tests and the analysis of the information gained from them closely follow the
tenants of Thomas Plmpera , Vera E. Troegerb , and Eric Neumayerc. The authors
demonstrate in their paper, Case Selection and Causal Inference in Qualitative
Research, the validity of results gained from small sample sizes to examine breaks in
patterns, or in this case, breaks in a system, that are connected to qualitative
variables working within the system, allowing a researcher to discern some reliable

46

probabilities for the occurrence of system breaks, and to begin exploring their
causes.94
For the UXD, the random sampling of successes and failures from the analysis
of engagement scenarios are governed by a finite number of qualitative properties
that have a relationship to the social elements within the system, and that as these
qualitative properties continue to manifest during tests, they can actually be
rendered to probabilities, reflecting the scenarios likelihood to be an actual event
with very similar end results.95
The UXD in this example begins by segmenting Iraq into six independently
testable regions and then makes a selection of post-war approaches being proposed
for US forces from the assessments being presented to decision-makers. The UXD
next undergoes the process of discovery to find relevant information that will help
to define the system, the user (US forces, given) the social elements, and the
motivating characteristics of those social elements.
The UXDs review of the assessments on post-invasion conditions of Iraq in
2003 reveals three broadly defined approaches to regional stability that can be
tested: 1. total disengagement (where the US forces invade and withdraw, leaving
only a US presence of assistance to infrastructure, NGOs, and red cross), 2. partial
engagement (where US forces enter regions, expel insurgent entities, make
connections with local influencers, and then fallback to isolated posts), and 3. total
engagement (where US forces enter regions, expel insurgent entities, make
connections with local influencers, and imbed themselves among the population).

94 Plmpera, Case Selection and Causal Inference, 16-17.
95 Ibid.

47
Further review of assessments identifies variations in regional responses to a

US presence, the variations are: 1. amicable (social elements want to work with the
US forces to regain stability as quickly as possible), 2. immediately hostile (US forces
engage hostile elements immediately), 3. resistant (social elements are passively
resistant to US forces) 4. latent hostility (social elements are deceptive or initially
amicable, but will turn hostile quite suddenly).
Additionally, regional advisors representing Iraq inform the user experience
designer on the possibilities of any region in Iraq standing in cultural opposition
with US forces that could be exploited to incite hostility. These probabilities are
defined as: 1. low threat (region reaction will likely support cultural congruencies
for a long time), 2. Medium threat (region is divided or impartial and will sway
often), 3. High threat (region is likely to have hostile views toward US forces at the
onset of engagement, and that they view these hostilities as culturally significant.)
The idea behind these threat levels is that the higher the threat in a region, the
better chance there is of a creeping or sudden violent upheaval, and the more likely
it is that this region will be a target to be influenced by active opponents of US
objectives. This information is used during tests to inform commanders on how
difficult they should be making the scenario for US forces testing within it.
The UXD assesses that the random selection of conditions, which are
engineered to produce failure in the field, serves to represent the realistic
possibility of failure when calculating success probabilities, which may otherwise be
excluded due to the small sample sizes being analyzed. The UXD reviews the result
of the tests once they are all completed and prepares them for presentation. A test

48

analysis summary would likely precede the detailed data on the tests and the
corresponding analyses that follow it.
The UXD writes a summary that considers the results from both extremes of
the possible conditions being examined in this case: those scenarios that
represented the most resistance against US forces and those that represented the
most support, as well as an overview of the findings in regard to the available
approaches (total disengagement, partial engagement, total engagement), responses
by social elements that reflect patterned behaviors, and the effect of variable
conditions upon those approaches under randomized threat levels of difficulty.
Region 4, which was set as a high threat for these tests, proposes a low
probability of success over all approaches. The approach of total disengagement saw
the US presence as primarily non-military, and as directed by commanders
assessing the engagement during the tests, the presence was most often wiped out,
pushed out, or accepted for only as long as it took another influential force to
intrude upon the region. Partial engagement, which would prove to broadly be the
actual approach used throughout the vast majority of post-war Iraq, was shown to
be ineffective. Although the approach produced significantly higher success rates
than total disengagement, it still landed well below a 30% chance of maintaining
stability. Total engagement, where US forces acted to secure and hold the region
within its population, had a much higher success rates, of 45%+, but still low enough
to suggest a long-term swaying of power imbedded among a dwindling civilian
population, from one engagement to the next.

49
Region 1, which was set as a low threat for these tests, proposes a low

probability of success over all approaches except total engagement. The approach of
total disengagement similarly saw the US presence removed rather quickly, even
under the most accepting of conditions, with only slightly higher success rates than
region 4. Partial engagement was shown to be as ineffective under low threat
conditions as it was under high threat conditions, with success rates around the low
and mid 30 percentiles. Total engagement of region 1 demonstrates success rates
far above region 4, with a 75%+ chance of stability expected per the average
engagement.
The analysis of every scenario that has been run for this set of tests reveals
some universal trends. A trend that total disengagement has abysmal success
ratings under all and any possible conditions is an unsurprising find.
For the UXD in this case, the results are a reflection of some notions she saw
being pushed forward in several assessments presented to the state department to
influence decisions for post-war Iraq. It was from these expectations that the
definition of total disengagement was created for the UXD, and the poor results
hypothesized for this approach in post-war Iraq were readily verified through these
tests, suggesting that some form of military presence would be required for post-
invasion stability.
Another universal trend was noticed to occur during interactions between US
forces and social elements engaging for the first time, where military personnel
intrude upon homes and land without invitation. Apparently, as the reaction was
directed to manifest within the simulations by multiple different cultural advisors,

50

this served to alienate the US forces both militarily and civilly. Such a finding begs
the question of whether or not future engagements may produce better results with
an approach that tests the addition of trained US forces to practice cultural
sensitivity.
Results from the UXDs testing of partial engagements across regions of
various threat levels provide some startling insights on a trend of misleading
assessments that hypothesize high rates of success for this approach. In actuality,
the scenarios that showed the most success for this approach were functioning
under amicable conditions with a low threat of escalation. In these scenarios,
success was as high as 70%, but across all other tested conditions, failures were
more common and increased significantly as the regions being tested scaled closer
to high threat levels and latent hostility. The common interaction following the
failures of partial engagement during testing were the withdrawal of US forces after
they had established connections in populous areas of a region. Soon after,
oppositional or violent elements would impose their will upon the populous, take
advantage of the disengaged US forces, and chase them out or eradicate them with
the help of what was left of the civilian element in that region.
The results of hypotheses on total engagement reflected success rates that
were much higher throughout all scenarios and conditions, with upper 80% success
rates at the highest and upper 60% success rates for the lowest. However, advisors
directing the scenarios had occasionally represented the civil element as reaching
out publically for international support against an imposing embedded US force.
Political pressure is theorized to have reduced the US presence, as was simulated in

51

several outlier scenarios, and over time the opposition elements are seen to engage
the remaining US presence and drive them out. This scenario played out multiple
times, but not in a majority, which accounts for the steep drop in success rates
appearing seemingly at random across the test data.
The test results are presented to decision-makers in a table of probabilities
with detailed analysis to explain or propose theories on their occurrences and to the
assessments that had originally informed the boundaries and variables of the tests.
Perhaps the test results would have provided enough information to validate
good assessments, and lend itself to empower decision-makers with more informed
options, leading US forces to re-engage Iraq politically before invasion. The
application of user experience design could have produced valuable numerical
evidence on the probability of interaction results from what were previously
indiscernible social elements. The possible insights gained from analyzing the
outcomes of decisions via the simulation of the regions and their social elements
may have provided enough information to warrant a second look at the decision to
invade Iraq, or it may have at least guided our tactical engagements to lessen
unnecessary casualties.
Whatever the impact UX may have, the application of new technology and
new findings on human behavior to improve a nations position against its
antagonists is, and has always been, a critical factor for success. The application of
some version of user experience design to inform military and political decisions is
an imminent event, and it should be studied, refined, and encouraged within the
deciding parties of the United States military-political complex before the nation

52

finds itself trailing behind its enemies in the pursuit for a great weapon of defense:
good information.
Dr. Wendy Stokes offers a basis for this extrapolation on good information to
produce good decisions in her book Women in Contemporary Politics:96
"Democratic politics is not like anything else. It is the sphere of complex human
relations in which the good of each is balanced against the good of all in a multiplicity
of decisions about ends and means. Good decisions depend on good input (as all data
analysts know, GIGO: garbage in, garbage out). To make and successfully implement
good policies, good information about lives, desires, values, beliefs, aspirations and
behaviors is necessary.
In any method of analyzing information there exists the potential for the
separation of data from its actual inferences, resulting in misguided conclusions for
the assessments that the data is due to support.
The Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) developed by CORDS, (Civil Operations
Revolutionary Development Support) was a method of data analysis meant to
inform engagement operations by assessing the threat level and political
significance of regions of interest during the Vietnam War in 1971. David W.P. Elliott
in his book The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong
Delta, 1930-1975, details the observations of Richard Hunt on the short-comings of
the HES method:97

96 Wendy Stokes, Women in Contemporary Politics (Boston: Polity Publishing, 2005), 3.

97 David W.P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta,

1930-1975 (London: Routledge Publishing, 2006), 380-81.

53
The problems with HES stemmed from its inception, when US officials yielded

to the temptation to publicize HES data as evidence of progress. HES was designed as
an internal management technique, which was a valid use. As a public relations tool,
HES was disastrously misused.
If the data informing the HES ratings and the analyses that followed them had
been subjected to testing, not just to validate tactical approach, but to validate the
assumptions on the characteristics of the social elements affecting the region, the
opportunity to restate the flawed findings of the HES 1971 conclusions would have
been much more difficult to pursue. Ignoring the need to study and validate data by
testing the motivating characteristics within the object(s) being studied, i.e. regional
social elements, can leave the interpretation of data open to perversions bad
information; where the assessments in which they support are vulnerable to myopic
rationalizations that serve an agenda, like that of the HES technique where data
analysis results produced contradicting and even self-invalidating conclusions.98
The application of user experience design practices addresses this need to validate
data with attention to the analysis of characteristics affecting system elements, such
as those that were ignored with the HES program.

Conclusion

Decision-makers are in need of a means to extract and analyze reliable

information on regions of interest, regional social elements, and the impact of

decisions on how to engage these regions. The thought leaders who work to

98 Ibid.

54

influence these decisions are in need of a new way to support their assessments
with equally reliable values and measures. The practice of user experience design
can address these needs and create an approach that takes credible speculations to
a testing environment where they may be compared with equal measure, outside
the influence of self-interest or denial.

There has been a considerable amount of capital investment in the field of

user experience design in the information age, and it has spurred the creation of
user experience testing organizations, software for testing and designing
simulations, crowd-sourcing testers, and the publishing of studiously observed test
results complied from millions of documented user experience tests.99

The nexus of scenario-based tests and their results span multiple industries

and stages of technical evolution.

Institutions and organizations like the Information Architecture Institute and
the Nielsen Norman Group house raw data as well as professional analyses on
human-behavior interaction and their applicable quantification within specific
systems. It is to the credit of these organizations that an effective science for
practicing user experience design exists today. The information provided by these
organizations assists UXDs in confirming their own test results, in analyzing the
questionable behavior within their system, and in referencing substantiated

99 Lance Loveday, ROI on UX The Evidence is Mounting, Conversion Conference (blog),

March 28, 2014, accessed October 28, 2015,

http://www.conversionconference.com/blog/roi-on-ux-the-evidence-is-mounting/.

55

heuristics for interaction behavior to support the assertions proposed by the

scenarios they test.100

I propose that the same infrastructure for processing information can be

leveraged through the adoption of UXD to benefit the interests of a nation and the
decision-makers who contend with foreign regions of interest. A study on the use of
user experience design to affect military-political decisions has not yet been made.
There is no past event of UXD influencing military or political engagements that can
be referenced as an example for the real-life application of the practice. Without
evidence, or even a study to suggest the specific application of user experience
design, a speculative example of the application of UXD has been the only means of
addressing its actual application to inform military-political decision-making. A
study or series of trials to examine the application of user experience design will
identify its proper purpose and place in this new arena.

Although speculative, my thesis supports an initiative to explore the

application of user experience design in military-political decision-making without

professing its definitive success. It has demonstrated an example of UXDs
application and has considered arguments both supporting and challenging its
practices. By way of the industries of social interest before it, the practice of user
experience design has already proven itself as a definitive means of success for
business. The benefits to this practice of analysis are likely to be proven in the
military-political arena as well. The practices specific use to measure potential
social impacts, to understand behavior behind interactions and social influences,

100 Ibid.

56

and to design ways to alter the consequences of those interactions offers the same
benefits to the military-political decision makers as they have to the consumer
industry.


















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