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CD-ARES 2012: Multidisciplinary Research and Practice for Information Systems pp 108–122Cite as

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On Complexity Reduction of User Interfaces for Safety-Critical Systems

On Complexity Reduction of User Interfaces for Safety-Critical Systems

  • Andreas Holzinger21,
  • Evgenia Popova21,
  • Bernhard Peischl22 &
  • …
  • Martina Ziefle23 
  • Conference paper
  • 2116 Accesses

  • 5 Citations

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 7465)

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.

Keywords

  • Complexity reduction
  • data visualization
  • process visualization
  • usability engineering
  • safety-critical systems
  • industrial design

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics & Documentation, Research Unit Human-Computer Interaction, Medical University Graz, A-8036, Graz, Austria

    Andreas Holzinger & Evgenia Popova

  2. Softnet Austria, A-8010, Graz, Austria

    Bernhard Peischl

  3. Communication Science, Human Technology Centre (Humtec), RWTH Aachen University, D-52062, Germany

    Martina Ziefle

Authors
  1. Andreas Holzinger
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  2. Evgenia Popova
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  3. Bernhard Peischl
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  4. Martina Ziefle
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of IT, Engineering and Environment, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes Campus, 5001, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Gerald Quirchmayr

  2. Department of Information Technologies, University of Economics, W. Churchill Sq. 4, 130 67, Prague 3, Czech Republic

    Josef Basl

  3. School of Information Science, Korean Bible University, 16 Danghyun 2-gil, Nowon-gu, 139-791, Seoul, Korea

    Ilsun You

  4. Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, 2076 Constant Hall, 23529, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Lida Xu

  5. Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology and SBA Research, Favoritenstrsse 9-11, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Edgar Weippl

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© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

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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

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