Functional versus Schematic Overview Displays: Impact on Operator Situation Awareness in Process Monitoring

Abstract

It is important for console operators to maintain good situation awareness while monitoring process operations. A key component that helps operators achieve better situation awareness is how the information about the process is displayed on their console. Most oil and gas refineries still utilize traditional schematic displays and connecting lines between equipments to present process information. In this study, we designed a functional layout for an overview display. This layout shows the same process parameters as a traditional schematic display, but in a different format. Eighteen plant operators viewed both displays to monitor a crude unit process and their situation awareness was measured. Results indicated that operators' situation awareness was significantly higher when they monitored the process on a functional display compared with a schematic display. The implications of the findings for continuous process control are discussed.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bullemer

Reising

D.V.

Burns

Hajdukiewicz

Andrzejewski

(2008). Effective Operator Display Design. ASM Consortium Guidelines (Version 4.00). Minneapolis, MN: ASM Consortium.

Burns

C. M.

Hajdukiewicz

(2004). Ecological Interface Design, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

Durso

F. T.

Rawson

Girotto

(2007). Comprehension and situation awareness. In Durso

F. T.

Nickerson

Dumais

Lewandowsky

Perfect

, Handbook of Applied Cognition (2nd), Chicester: Wiley, pp. 163–193.

Endsley

M. R.

(1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32^nd Annual Meeting. Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society, 97–101.

Endsley

M. R.

(1995). Measurement of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human factors, 37(1), 65–84.

Flach

J. M.

Bennett

K. B.

(1992). Graphical interfaces to complex systems: Separating the wheat from the chaff. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 36th Annual Meeting (pp. 470–474). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

Jamieson

G. A.

Vicente

K. J.

(2001). Ecological interface design for petrochemical applications: Supporting operator adaptation, continuous learning, and distributed, collaborative work. Computers and Chemical Engineering, 25, 1055–1074.

Jessa

Burns

C. M.

(2000). Visual sensitivities of dynamic graphical displays. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 65, 206–222.

Moore

Corbridge

(1996). Designing mimic diagrams: Moving from art to science. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 40th Annual Meeting (pp. 328–332). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

10.

Pringle

H. L.

(2000). The roles of scene characteristics, memory and attentional breadth on the representation of complex real-world scenes (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.

11.

Reising

D. C.

Bullemer

P. T.

(2008). A direct perception, span-of-control overview display to support a process control operator's situation awareness: A practice-oriented design process. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 51st Annual Meeting, New York City, NY, Sep. 22–26.

12.

Sanderson

P.M.

Flach

J.M.

Buttigieg

M.A.

Casey

E.J.

(1989). Object displays do not always support better integrated task performance. Human Factors, 31, 183–198.

13.

Vicente

K. J.

Rasmussen

(1990). The ecology of human-machine systems II: Mediating “direct perception” in complex work domains. Ecological Psychology, 2(3), 207–249.