You haven't said if you were new to playing DW, so I'll try to cover the basics of the game.
First, make sure you don't have SHOW TRUTH enabled in the nav map. You can right click on the screen (as long as you don't have any platforms bracketed) and check if its off or on. One other small thing, you HAVE to have the contact selected (bracketed) to see any info in the box.
Next, you HAVE to have a target selected for tracking. You can do this via sonar, the scope, esm, or radar but you (actually, your crew) HAVE to be tracking something.
If you're tracking the target, go back to the nav map and right-click on the target's symbol. Go to the Classification section and enter all the info you know so far. Is it hostile or friendly? Submarine or surface? Can you ID it by hull type yet?
You may also want to try turning on some of the auto crew stations. I've been playing these Sonalysts games since the mid 90's and I still turn on my sonar and fire control auto crew. Its actually more accurate to have these guys enabled, sometimes they don't get it right.
