APPLICATION OF A HUMAN FACTOR GUIDELINE TO

SUPERVISORY CONTROL INTERFACE IMPROVEMENT

Pere Ponsa, Ramon Vilanova

Automatic Control Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Av. Victor Balaguer s/n

08800 Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain

Telecomunication and Systems Engineering Department, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona

ETSE, 08913 Bellaterra, Spain

Marta Díaz, Anton Gomà

4all-L@b Usability Laboratory, Technical University of Catalonia, Av. Victor Balaguer s/n

08800 Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain

S.A.F. Sports Service Area, Universitat Autónom

a de Barcelona

ETSE, 08913 Bellaterra, Spain

Keywords: Supervisory control, user interface design, human computer interaction.

Abstract: In tasks of human supervision in industrial control room they

are applied generic disciplines as the software

engineering for the design of the computing interface and the human factors for the design of the control

room layout. From the point of view of the human computer interaction, to these disciplines it is necessary

to add the usability engineering and the cognitive ergonomics since they contribute rules for the user

centered design. The main goal of this work is the application of a human factors guideline for supervisory

control interface design in order to improve the efficiency of the human machine systems in automation.

This communication presents the work developed to improve the Sports Service Area interface of the

Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, control systems and the role of

control room human operators have changed

dramatically. Human operator activity has evolved

from manually performing the process, to control

system supervision. Today, the human operator

requires an in-depth knowledge of the process that

he/she is overseeing and the ability to make effective

decisions within demanding constraints.

The increased complexity of i

ndustrial process

control calls for a new methodological approach (for

research and design purposes), which reproduces the

essential components of current control systems: the

environment, the task at hand and human operator

activity (Samad and Weyrauch, 2000).

The complexity of industrial process supervision

mak

es it necessary to supplement the Human Factors

approach and the Human-Computer Interaction

approach with a cross-disciplinary cooperation in

order to integrate knowledge and methods from

other fields, especially Cognitive Ergonomics,

Automation and Artificial Intelligence (Granollers

et. al., 2005), (Holstom, 2000) (Petersen, 2000). Our

view is that complete control systems engineering

must encompass all these approaches.

Ergonomics is concerned with the adaptation of

tech

nology to suit human operator need and ability

so as to achieve effectiveness, efficiency and

user/worker satisfaction and comfort (Cañas, 2004).

Supervisory control is the set of activities and

echniques developed over a set of controllers

(programmable logic controllers and industrial

regulators) which ensures the fulfilling of control

goals. One of the main goals is to prevent possible

plant malfunctions that can lead to economical lose

and/or result in damage (Petersen and May, 2006).

For this reason, other fields of knowledge concerned

with manufacturing systems performance – such as

161

Ponsa P., Vilanova R., Díaz M. and Gomà A. (2007).

APPLICATION OF A HUMAN FACTOR GUIDELINE TO SUPERVISORY CONTROL INTERFACE IMPROVEMENT.

In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, pages 161-168

DOI: 10.5220/0001641201610168

 SciTePress

maintenance and industrial security – are

complementary in the study of supervision systems.

In this paper a methodology for the creation of a

human factor guideline for supervisory control

interface design is proposed. In section 2 we present

a checklist of indicators of the guideline called

‘ergonomic guideline for supervisory control

interface design’ (GEDIS Guia ergonómica para el

diseño de interfaz de supervision in Spanish

version). The Sports Service Area project is

described in section 3. The purpose is not to cover

with detail the entire project but to give an idea of

the different kind of topics that have been covered.

In section 4, transition from the GEDIS model to

Sports Service Area interface in control room is

evaluated. In this section, a set of recommendations

about graphical interface improvement are studied.

Finally, conclusions and future research lines.

2 GEDIS GUIDELINE

The previous research on human interface design

guidelines includes for example the standard ISO

11064 that establishes ergonomic principles for the

evaluation of control centers (ISO, 2004), the

Human Factors Design Standards HFDS of the

Federal Aviation Administration of the United States

(Federal Aviation Administration, 1996), the Human

Interface Design Review Guidelines NUREG 0700

in nuclear power plants (Nuclear Regulatory

Commission, 2002), the I-002 Safety and

Automation Systems NORSOK about Norwegian

petroleum industry (Norsok, 2006) and the Man

Systems Integration Standard NASA-STD-3000

about manned space programs (Nasa, 1995).

An example of cognitive modelling in human

computer interaction is the GOMS guideline, about

goals, operators, methods and selection rules in

usability analysis (Card et. al., 1983). In

combination with Keystroke-Level Model KLM an

interface can be studied, also task execution time

and human efficiency can be studied too.

The GEDIS guide is a method that seeks to cover

all the aspects of the interface design (Ponsa and

Díaz, 2007). From the initial point of view of

strategies for effective human-computer interaction

Figure 1: A typical cyclic network menu in supervisory

control interface associated to navigation indicator.

applied to supervision tasks in industrial control

room (Nimmo, 2004), (Schneiderman, 1997).

The GEDIS guide offers design

recommendations in the moment to create the

interface. Also, already offers recommendations of

improvement of interfaces created. The GEDIS

guide is composed of two parts: description of ten

indicators and measure of ten indicators. The

indicators have been defined from extracted

concepts of other generic human factors guidelines,

and for aspects of human interface design in human

computer interaction.

The method to continue for the use of the GEDIS

guide is: analyze the indicator, measure the

indicator, obtain the global evaluation index and

finally offer recommendations of improvement.

For the correct use of the GEDIS guide it is

necessary the collaboration between the control

room technical team and the human factor

technician, since in some cases to analyze the

indicator is necessary the expert’s opinion.

2.1 Indicators List

The GEDIS guide consists of ten indicators that seek

to cover all the aspects of the interface design in the

supervisory control domain. The indicators are:

architecture, distribution, navigation, color, text font,

status of the devices, process values, graphs and

tables, data-entry commands, and finally alarms. For

example, the relationship between architecture and

navigation indicators is illustrated in Fig. 1. The

physical plant can separate in area, subarea, and

team. In the same way, the interface presents four

navigation levels. Fig. 1 shows a possible layout to

locate all the connections between screens. The

connection among screens is complex in a

supervisory control interface. From the point of view

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Figure 2: An example of object’s layout inside the screen

for the distribution indicator.

of human computer interaction, is a typical example

of cyclic network menu.

Distribution indicator of Fig. 2 shows a possible

layout to locate all the objects inside the screen. The

objects homogeneous distribution allows us to

maintain the interface coherence when user changes

the screen. The secondary objects are located in

screen areas that don’t require the user’s attention

(enterprise logo, and date/hour information). The

user should recognize the screen title and the general

navigation tool to move among screens. The main

objects are located in visible screen areas (alarms,

data-entry commands, subnavigation tool, and

synoptic objects). The user can surveillance the

process evolution without acting (human out of the

loop), or he can decide to introduce changes in the

set point or in the controller’s parameters (human in

the loop) inside a faceplate window in the data-entry

command object. The user should have special

attention to the alarm indicators, which should be

located in a clear way in the screen so that the user

can recognize the situation (situation awareness).

3 SAF PROJECT

This section presents the development of the

supervisory control system, with special emphasis

on the interface features, for the Sports Service Area

(SAF in Catalan version) of the Universitat

Autonoma of Barcelona (UAB). This supervisory

control system has been developed by a team of

Computer Sciences Engineers with common design

guidelines. Even some basic principles on

ergonomics and interface design were taken into

account; the GEDIS analysis will show existing

weakness. An alternative presentation of the SAF

project can be found in (Vilanova and Gomà, 2006).

Figure 3: Main window of the developed monitoring

system with a global view of the Sports Service Area.

Figure 4: ISA-PID used to close the loops.

First of all, it is worth to know that the UAB is a

campus based university with more than 40.000

inhabitants (students, academics, staff, etc.). In fact,

this makes the University campus to behave like a

city with some sort of facilities offered for their

inhabitants. Among them, the Sports Service Area

(SAF) is one of the largest and with more complex

installations. It encompasses indoor as well as

outdoor activities that run for more than 12h each

day. Just to give an idea of the different installations

that give support to the offered activities. We can

find there: covered swimming pool, boulders,

outdoor facilities for tennis, football, athletics, etc.,

indoor installations for fitness, basketball, aerobic,

gym, etc. (Antsaklis et. al., 1999), (Astrom, 1999),

(Kheir et. al., 1996).

Therefore, large complexes build up from

different subsystems. Each one of these subsystems

has to assure a quality of service each day. This fact

introduces the need for good monitoring tools to

help on this task. In addition, there is a hug number

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of automation and control problems (automated

watering, temperature controls for water and indoor

areas, lightning systems, ozone controlled system for

water cleaning in covered swimming pools, etc.).

The SAF project has different automation levels:

from field instrumentation and data collection, PLC

programming and feedback loop configuration, to

information integration on a SCADA system. The

SAF project use PLC from different manufacturers

(SIEMENS, GE-FANUC, Landys, and Mitsubishi).

All the data has been integrated through

implementing the corresponding supervisory control

interface with Wonderware suite called In TOUCH.

The basic communications use specific drivers to

connect PLC with PC based control; the advanced

communications use the standard OPC protocol.

An example: for indoor activities temperature

control of both the SAF building and the water for

the gym showers has been implemented. This means

the students, in control room operator role, had to

close some loops by using the ISA-PID present

either in the PLC or in the software (see Fig. 4).

One important aspect of a monitoring system is

how it deals with alarms. As this feature is a

common feature, it should be incorporated in every

part of the system according to the same rules. This

way, in every SCADA window and alarm indicator

has to be included that shows the human operator if

an alarm is currently fired and can let you go

directly to the main alarm window to process it.

Finally, design implementation and configuration

of the In TOUCH based SCADA system has been

done starting from zero. This allowed to think of a

distributed application where from the different

computers located either at the main SAF office or at

the technical staff room the overall system can be

accessed. In addition a special access, using terminal

services, for the technical staff has been enabled so

remote operation can also be done from outside the

SAF installations.

4 SAF EVALUATION

The connection between SAF designer and GEDIS

guideline designer is necessary to define a global

evaluation of the SAF interface and can give a set of

recommendations about graphical screen

improvement (see Fig. 5).

Figure 5: SAF interface evalutation with GEDIS guide

method.

4.1 Evaluation

The evaluation expressed in quantitative numeric

form or in qualitative format it seeks to promote the

user's reflection that stuffs the GEDIS guide by way

of questionnaire, so that it picks up the use

experience that doesn't end up being verbalized in

many occasions.

Each one of the indicators of the Table 1 and

Table 2 can substructure in diverse subindicators.

For example, the indicator Color can be detailed in:

absence of non appropriate combinations (5),

number of colors (5), blink absence (no alarm

situation) (5), contrast screen versus graphical

objects (3), relationship with text (3). For each

subindicator it is recommended it is punctuated

numerically in a scale from 1 to 5. In this example

the number of subindicators of the indicator Color is

J = 5 (see formula 1). The formula necessary to

calculate the numeric value of each indicator is the

formula 1.

∑

Subindw

Indicator

(1)

where, Subind= subindicator and w = weight.

The mean value that one obtains by the formula

1 with these numeric values is 4,2 . If it is rounded,

the value is 4, so that to the indicator Color it is

assigned the value 4 in this example, considering

that each one of the subindicators has the same

weight (w1 = w2… =wJ = 1).

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Table 1: GEDIS guide indicators (part one).

Indicator name and

Subindicator name

Numeric/qualitative range

and SAF numeric value

Architecture 1,7

Map existence [YES, NO] [5,0] 0

Number of levels le [le<4, le>4] [5,0] 0

Division: plant, area,

subarea, team

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Distribution 3

Model comparison [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Flow process [clear, medium, no clear]

[5.3,0] 3

Density [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Navigation 3

Relationship with

architecture

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Navig. between screens [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Color 5

Absence of non

appropriate combinations

[YES, NO] [5,0] 5

Color number c [4<c<7, c>7] [5,0] 5

Blink absence (no alarm

situation)

[YES, NO] [5,0] 5

Contrast screen versus

graphical objects

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Relationship with text [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Text font 3,2

Font number f [f<4, f>4] 5

Absence of small font

(smaller 8)

[YES, NO] [5,0] 0

Absence of non

appropriate combinations

[YES, NO] [5,0] 5

Abbreviation use [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

where, a= appropriate, m=medium and na = no

appropiate.

Each one of the indicators of the Table 1 is

measured in a scale from 1 to 5. The human expert

operator prepares in this point of concrete

information on the indicator, so that it can already

value the necessities of improvement. The values of

the indicators can group so that the GEDIS guide

offers the global evaluation of the interface and it

can be compared with others interfaces.

The formula necessary to calculate the GEDIS

guide global evalutation index is the formula 2.

∑

indp

evaluationGlobal

(2)

where, ind = indicator and p = weight.

Table 2: GEDIS guide indicators (part two).

Indicator name and

Subindicator name

Numeric/qualitative range

and SAF numeric value

Status of the devices 4

Uniform icons and

symbols

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Status team

representativeness

[YES, NO] [5,0] 5

Process values 3

Visibility [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Location [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Graphs and tables 4

Format [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Visibility [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Location [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Grouping [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Data-entry commands 3

Visibility [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Usability [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Feedback [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Alarms 3,8

Visibility of alarm

window

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Location [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

Situation awareness [YES, NO] [5,0] 5

Alarms grouping [a, m. na] [5,3,0] 5

Information to the

operator

[a, m. na] [5,3,0] 3

where, a= appropriate, m=medium and na = no

appropiate.

In a first approach it has been considered the

mean value among indicators expressed in the

formula 2. That is to say, to each indicator it is

assigned an identical weight (p1 = p2… =p10 = 1)

although it will allow it in future studies to value the

importance of some indicators above others. The

global evaluation is expressed in a scale from 1 to 5.

Assisting to the complexity of the systems of

industrial supervision and the fact that an ineffective

interface design can cause human error, the global

evaluation of a supervision interface it should be

located in an initial value of 3-4 and with the aid of

GEDIS guide it is possible to propose measures of

improvement to come closer at the 5.

4.2 Experimental Study

The experimental study is the evaluation of SAF

interface with the collaboration of control

engineering students from Technical University of

Catalonia. From Vilanova i la Geltrú city, twenty

five students monitoring SAF interface around three

weeks. The students define a numeric value for each

indicator and propose interface improvement.

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Figure 6: Original Piscina ACS screen.

Figure 7: Piscina ACS revisited with changes in color

indicator.

The SAF interface global evaluation is 3,4. The

global evaluation is expressed in a scale from 1 to 5,

so it is necessary to indicate SAF designer a set of

important recommendations:

 revise the relationship between architecture,

distribution and navigation indicators

 improve the feedback between interface and

human operator in data-entry commands

indicator

 improve the location of alarm indicator

With GEDIS guide is possible too to indicate

SAF designer a set of important recommendations

about graphical screen improvement. For example,

the Piscina ACS screen can improve with a set of

changes in color and text font indicators. Fig. 6

shows the original Piscina ACS screen and Fig. 7

shows revisited Piscina ACS screen.

A second example, the Fronton and Rocodrom

screen can improve with a set of changes in

distribution indicator.

Figure 8: Original Fronto and Rocodrom screen.

Figure 9: Fronto and Rocodrom revisited with changes in

distribution indicator.

Fig. 8 shows the original Fronton and Rocodrom

screen and Fig. 9 shows revisited Fronton and

Rocodrom screen.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In tasks of human supervision in industrial control

room is habitual that an external engineer, - by

means of the commercial programs Supervisory

Control and Data Acquisition SCADA -, take charge

of designing the supervision interfaces in function to

the knowledge on the physical plant and the group of

physical-chemical processes contributed by the

process engineers.

Although standards exist about security in the

human machine systems that impact in aspects of

physical ergonomics, interface design by means of

rules of style, it is remarkable the absence of the

design of interactive systems centered in the user

where the engineering usability and the cognitive

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ergonomics can contribute significant improvements

(Nielsen, 1993).

The GEDIS guide is an approach that tries to fill

a methodological hole that joins the efforts of the

systems engineering and the human factors for the

improvement of the effectiveness of the human-

machine system in industrial control room.

The application of the GEDIS guide to the study

of cases contributes among other details the measure

in form of indicators of aspects of interface design,

the recommendation of changes for the improvement

of the interface, and a global evaluation index that

allows to quantify the current state of the interface

regarding the future state after applying the correct

measures.

The studied case presented shows a Spanish

academic application, but with the same

characteristics of an industrial project. With the

GEDIS guide approach it’s possible to perceive

diverse anomalies and to propose improvements in

the interface design.

Another current study with the GEDIS guide is

the analysis of a sugar mill interface. The Sugar

Technology Center (CTA) in Spain has been

developed a training simulator to modeling and

simulating the production process and the human

operators’ supervisory tasks. The simulator

developed in this center is an example of full scale

simulator, a type of simulator that reproduces the

whole operating environment (Merino et. al., 2005).

This simulator emulates the control room of a sugar

mill. A series of object oriented modelling library

tools are used to create each part of the sugar mill:

diffusion, evaporation, purification, sugar room,

boilers, dryer, and liquor storage.

In these moments the 4all-L@b Usability

Laboratory of the Technical University of Catalonia

is analyzing the GEDIS guide to simplify the

number of indicators of the guide, to improve the

evaluation method, and to promote the use of the

guide inside the cycle of life of the software

engineering, in this case in the early phases of the

supervisory control interface design.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Participation of the second author is supported in

part by the Spanish CICYT program under contract

DPI2004-06393.

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