In
the blog post, Goal
Oriented HMI Design For Improved Operation, I covered a method for
designing and identifying the goals of an application, called Goal Directed
Task Analysis (GDTA), based on an the white paper: “Situational Awareness
The Next Leap in Industrial Human Machine Interface Design”. This post covers elements of effective
window structure for improved HMI Design.
Figure 5 – Effective HMI Window Structure
“An
extremely common method of designing the window layouts of an industrial HMI is
to simply replicate the P&ID’s and then to provide navigational methods to
each P&ID representation. By utilizing the P&ID’s the design effort is
very low but the issue with this approach is that the P&ID’s were not
created with the intention of the operations teams achieving the key business
goals and as such this design approach rarely does achieve them. Another common
approach taken when there is a great deal of
information contained within a system it to pack in the content as densely as
possible. At first glance this may seem logical but in actuality this approach
really only serves to overload the operator. Research has shown that on average
a person can process only about four chunks of data at a time.6 With this in
mind we must use an approach that will allow an operator to scan as few items
as possible to determine if an action must be taken. To best achieve this, the system
needs to be modeled in a 4 Level hierarchical nature as depicted in Figure 5.
The windows in this structure will effectively orient the user to awareness,
action, or details depending on the window Level being observed.
Level 1 – Area Wide Overviews Figure 6 - Level 1 Window Example
The top of the structure or Level 1 windows will provide all of the key design elements that
will communicate to the operator the information required to attain the projection Level of situational awareness for the key sub-goals identified in the GDTA (performed as part of the Goal Oriented Design). Level 1 windows will very rarely look like the actual process but instead will more resemble an information dashboard as illustrated by the example in Figure 6. The most important aspect of the Level 1 windows is to drive the operator awareness and facilitate a determination of when action or further investigation is required and facilitate access to the Level 2 windows.
Level 2 – Facility Wide Overviews Figure 7 - Level 2 Window Example


Level
3 – Detailed Operating Information Figure 8 - Level 3 Window Example


Level
4 – Auxiliary Information Figure 9 - Level 3 Window Example


Source: Krajewski, John (“Situational Awareness The Next Leap in Industrial Human Machine Interface Design”
Are you considering this approach in your facility today? I'd love to get your feedback.
In the next few posts I cover other tools and techniques available (effective color usage, actionable alarm management, and effective design elements) to improve the operations outcomes.
Related
Links:
- Top 5 trends that currently drive the need of the modern industrial HMI application
- The Impact of Human Error in Industrial Automation
- A Results Driven Approach to improving overall HMI design
- Goal Oriented HMI Design For Improved Operation
Sign up today
to get the weekly Wonderware HMI/SCADA Times newsletter at http://situation-awareness.com/ and click on Subscribe and you will be receiving a
FREE copy of the recent White paper: “Situational Awareness, The Next Leap in
Industrial Human Machine Interface Design”
No comments:
Post a Comment