Abstract
Control and communication systems used at power plants or incineration facilities offer various graphical visualizations of the physical parts of the site; however, they rarely provide sufficient visualization of the signal data. There is the problem, that such facilities contain 10,000 or more data acquisition points; each of them continuously sending data updates to the control system (once in 20 ms or less). This huge load of data can be analyzed by a human expert only if appropriately visualized. Such a visualization tool is AutoDyn, developed by the company Technikgruppe, which allows processing and visualizing complex data and supports decision making. In order to configure this tool, a user interface is necessary, called TGtool. It was originally developed by following a system-centered approach, consequently it is difficult to use. Wrong configuration can lead to incorrect signal data visualization, which may lead to wrong decisions of the power plant personnel. An unintentional mistake could have dramatic consequences. The challenge was to re-design this tool, applying a user-centered approach. In this paper we describe the re-design of the configuration tool, following the hypothesis that a user-centered cognitive map structure helps to deal with the complexity without excessive training. The results of the evaluation support this hypothesis.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Thomas, J.C., Richards, J.T.: Achieving psychological simplicity: Measures and methods to reduce cognitive complexity. In: Sears, A., Jacko, J.A. (eds.) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd edn., pp. 489–508 (2008)
Ziefle, M.: The influence of user expertise and phone complexity on performance, ease of use and learnability of different mobile phones. Behaviour & Information Technology 21(5), 303–311 (2002)
Liu, Z., Stasko, J.T.: Mental Models, Visual Reasoning and Interaction in Information Visualization: A Top-down Perspective. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 16(6), 999–1008 (2010)
Rauterberg, M.: How to measure cognitive complexity in human-computer interaction. Cybernetics and Systems Research, 815–820 (1996)
Coskun, E., Grabowski, M.: Impacts of User Interface Complexity on User Acceptance in Safety-Critical Systems. In: Proceedings of the 10th American Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2004, pp. 3433–3443 (2004)
Afacan, Y., Erbug, C.: An interdisciplinary heuristic evaluation method for universal building design. Applied Ergonomics 40(4), 731–744 (2009)
Holzinger, A.: Usability engineering methods for software developers. Communications of the ACM 48(1), 71–74 (2005)
Shneiderman, B.: Universal usability. Communications of the ACM 43(5), 84–91 (2000)
Bastide, R., Navarre, D., Palanque, P.: A tool-supported design framework for safety critical interactive systems. Interacting with Computers 15(3), 309–328 (2003)
Heimgärtner, R., Holzinger, A.: Towards Cross-Cultural Adaptive Driver Navigation Systems. In: Holzinger, A., Weidmann, K.-H. (eds.) Empowering Software Quality: How Can Usability Engineering Reach These Goals?, pp. 53–67. Austrian Computer Society (2005)
Funk, M., Hamacher, N.: Concept of Automatic Usability Evaluation of Safety-Critical Interactive Systems in the Field (Konzept der automatischen Bewertung der Gebrauchstauglichkeit sicherheitskritischer Systeme). i-com 7(1), 18–23 (2008)
Holzinger, A., Waclick, O., Kappe, F., Lenhart, S., Orasche, G., Peischl, B.: Rapid Prototyping on the example of Software Development in the automotive industry: The Importance of their Provision for Software Projects at the Correct Time ICE-B 2011, pp. 57–61. SciTePress, INSTICC, Setubal (2011)
Holzinger, A.: Application of Rapid Prototyping to the User Interface Development for a Virtual Medical Campus. IEEE Software 21(1), 92–99 (2004)
Holzinger, A., Errath, M.: Mobile computer Web-application design in medicine: some research based guidelines. Universal Access in the Information Society International Journal 6(1), 31–41 (2007)
Holzinger, A., Stickel, C., Fassold, M., Ebner, M.: Seeing the System through the End Users’ Eyes: Shadow Expert Technique for Evaluating the Consistency of a Learning Management System. In: Holzinger, A., Miesenberger, K. (eds.) USAB 2009. LNCS, vol. 5889, pp. 178–192. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Holzinger, A., Kosec, P., Schwantzer, G., Debevc, M., Hofmann-Wellenhof, R., Frühauf, J.: Design and Development of a Mobile Computer Application to Reengineer Workflows in the Hospital and the Methodology to evaluate its Effectiveness. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 44(6), 968–977 (2011)
Duncker, K.: On problem-solving. In: Dashiell, J.F. (ed.) Psychological Monographs of the American Psychologoical Association, APA, vol. 58, pp. 1–114 (1945)
Nisbett, R.E., Wilson, T.D.: Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. Psychological Review 84(3), 231–259 (1977)
Holzinger, A., Leitner, H.: Lessons from Real-Life Usability Engineering in Hospital: From Software Usability to Total Workplace Usability. In: Holzinger, A., Weidmann, K.-H. (eds.) Empowering Software Quality: How Can Usability Engineering Reach these Goals?, pp. 153–160. Austrian Computer Society (2005)
Nielsen, J.: Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1993)
Pierotti, D.: Usability Techniques: Heuristic Evaluation Activities, http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/he-activities.html (last access June 01, 2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Holzinger, A., Popova, E., Peischl, B., Ziefle, M. (2012). On Complexity Reduction of User Interfaces for Safety-Critical Systems. In: Quirchmayr, G., Basl, J., You, I., Xu, L., Weippl, E. (eds) Multidisciplinary Research and Practice for Information Systems. CD-ARES 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7465. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32498-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32498-7_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32497-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32498-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)