Dr. Subhashini Ganapathy of Wright State University evaluated two different DCS interfaces for use in hand held devices. One interface was a standard DCS interface and the other a windows-based hierarchy. The latter performed significantly better than the former, emphasizing that handheld devices need their own interface with the process and not a smaller version of what is on the monitors in the control room.
The proposed work will determine how to make use of mobile devices with today’s commercial frameworks to work on process plant use cases. The project will consider both how to apply mobile technology and how to use these devices to enhance collaboration between workers.
- How can you increase the effectiveness of information presentation and management in situations where mobile devices can support and enhance human decision making?
- How can you combine the context aware computing factors, sensor information, and input modalities for providing an intuitive human computer interaction in the context of field operators in process industry?
- How can evidence-based information be presented to the field operator to help preventive maintenance? – This would be the scope for Phase II of this research.
Past research on information presentation on small form factor computing has highlighted the importance of presenting the right information in the right way to effectively engage the user. The screen space that is available on a small form factor is limited, and having detailed process information presented poses very interesting challenges.
Humans work with computerized processes in monitoring the system state and are often involved in re-planning, troubleshooting, and supervisory control tasks. As supervisory controllers of dynamic situations, humans make decisions based on numerous factors including heuristics, biases, cognitive ability, time availability, and the amount of risk involved. Having information at-a-glance can help speed decision making in supervisory control tasks. In process industry, one of the most important supervisory task conducted by field operators include managing and monitoring alarms and alerts. Alarms and alerts are used to give the user feedback about important activities that need attention. In designing alarms and alerts, it is important to understand the paths the user would take to address them. Some of the key issues with interface design for the representation of information are that (a) ad-hoc designs do not support reusability and extensibility, (b) the interface should provide useful cues and capture the attention of the user appropriately without information overloading, and © the interface should identify and integrate relevant information and present it to the user in a constructive way. Hence, there is a need to understand the information presentation of alarms and alerts in a cognitively effective manner that can help the field operators make informed decision in an effective manner that minimizes the downtime of the machine(s), multiple trips to the site, and also prevents cascading alarms.
This research will focus on addressing the research questions in three stages.
- Concept Abstraction: The first step of this research will be focusing on understanding the user and the user requirements. When engaging in the design of a model based system, one must first understand the current state of what users are doing today to accomplish the task. The reason for this is twofold: 1) it helps identify the users need(s) for a new system, and 2) it provides a reference point by which we can measure how much better a new system may be. The user requirements gathered in this stage will be translated to a cognitive model that can then be developed as a mobile application. Methodologies such as cognitive modeling have been used effectively to capture an expert decision maker’s mental process through techniques such as image theory, operator function model, or task analysis. They have been used successfully in areas such as AI modeling, robotics, and military-based applications. These models enable a modeler to specify what information the user will need, how it should be combined, and when it should be displayed. The top three common usage scenarios for field operators will be identified and modeled. (Note: Top three usage scenarios were not identified.)
- Model Development: The conceptual framework developed in the previous stage will be implemented into a prototype. The prototyping will involve creating multiple information presentation methods in terms of a software artifact that the will used for user testing. The prototype will be deployed on a Nexus 7 tablet platform.
- User Testing: An empirical study will be conducted to study the effect of intelligent information presentation on mobile device. The testing will be conducted in two steps. The first step would be testing the user interface for usability and user experience assessment with 10-12 participants who are not domain expert. Based on the feedback from the first test the user interface will be refined and then tested with 10-12 domain experts. Emerson Process Management will help in recruiting the domain experts.