[SystemSafety] power plant user interfaces

Mon Jul 13 06:22:09 CEST 2015

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On 2015-07-12 21:00 , Gergely Buday wrote:
> what is the basic literature on power plant user interfaces, especially if it is a nuclear
> power plant?

There is a sizeable literature on Human-Machine Interaction, HMI. It is an entire
multidisciplinary field. Some people like to call it Engineering Psychology, some people Cognitive
Science, others just Human Factors. There is a Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, which has
members from all over the world, and runs an annual European conference
https://www.hfes.org//Web/Default.aspx Its journal, Human Factors, has been established for many
decades. Just for computers (HCI), there are ACM Transactions and an annual ACM conference. There
is an annual UK BCS conference. In aviation, there is

Besides Don Norman's classic, which is not a text, Chris Wickens has a well-established text on
Engineering Psychology which is also not domain specific. Harold Thimbleby has a prize-winning
text on HCI called Press On. Harold works primarily with medical devices, not process control.

> I have learned that the Three Mile Island accident was partly due to errors in the control
> interface.

The word "error" is value-laden. If there is not an "error" then everything is alright - not......

You don't say what you have in mind with TMI. There were features that contributed to the
operators' misunderstanding the actual situation. There can be plenty of those without overt errors.

One of the classics in plant control is putting key indicators in a position where an operator
sitting at hisher intended position (usually a "console") cannot see them.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de