[SystemSafety] Fwd: Re: power plant user interfaces

Thu Jul 16 02:34:16 CEST 2015

Just on 'metaphors' in interface design there's Neal Stephenson's
interesting article on metaphors, 'In the beginning was the command line'
in which he coined the term 'metaphor shear', that moment when you realize
you've been living within a metaphor that's completely false, for example
the document metaphor on word processors doesn't prepare you for a system
crash...

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

Matthew Squair

MIEAust, CPEng
Mob: +61 488770655
Email; Mattsquair at gmail.com
Web: http://criticaluncertainties.com

On 16 Jul 2015, at 10:02 am, Les Chambers <les at chambers.com.au> wrote:

I find this conversation remarkable. I've always thought that this list is
an ongoing psychology experiment. We have an interesting cross-section of
opinion, all of which is understandably driven by the background of the
authors. We are what we know, we all have our special brand of hammer and we
all look for our familiar nails.
Some of the responses below reveal a disagreement on what a metaphor is. I
like the poet Robert Frost's definition (well summarised by Steve):
explaining this in terms of that where this is new and that is familiar.
Frost offered this in a speech he made circa 1934 and it has gained a
substantial currency in the literature.

I would put it to the unbelievers that a user interface IS a metaphor. It is
not a question of finding or not finding a metaphor for a particular system.
When you create a HMI you create a metaphor. The question then becomes: is
it a good one or a bad one. If it's a bad one you're building an unsafe
system. For example, the concept Steve described of having actual state and
required state indicators for a control valve, is a thing we call I/O pairs
in chemical processing. It is part of the DNA of the control systems
designer.

My comments on some of the responses:

Very much agree, Steve, it’s not possible to find a metaphor for every

system.
Disagree: if you can't find a good metaphor don't deploy the system, you
could be creating a hazard.

The whole point of a metaphor is to take something that the person is

already familiar with--

like how a railroad switching yard works--and use that to help them

understand something they don't know about-
Agree: see above

A good case can be made that formal logic is as metaphorical as it gets.

Agree: as long as the output of the logic provides status information that
is understandable by an operator. I note that in writing complex state
transition logic we often purposely did not use logic simplification
techniques. Instead we opted for something that could be read and understood
by someone other than the author of the code. If this meant wordy code so be
it.

; metaphors are not often used unless they have become the norm as there

are

obvious risks involved in using novel solutions.

Disagree: try explaining any concept without using a metaphor. Human beings
do this naturally. You can't avoid it just as you can't avoid the fact that
HMI is a metaphor and seeking out better metaphors is the key to better
design.
The comment '... risks involved in using novel solutions' smacks of the old
kernel: 'what has not been done before should not be done'.

There is a fair amount of math and logic involved. No metaphors.

Key to good HMI is rigorous formal analysis. There are other key processes.

Disagree: I have faith that, if the author of this comment spent substantial
time working with operators in a control room, living with the system he
designed and deployed, he would not have this opinion. 40 years ago when I
walked out of university with a shiny new electrical engineering degree I
would have totally agreed with him. It took plant operators all of six
months to beat that opinion out of me.
Five years later I found myself in a control room on an island in the Hong
Kong archipelago, in an engineering sense, very much alone and responsible
for a critical system (the plant was very close, on the other side of a six
inch thick concrete blast wall). English was the operators' second language.
Maths and logic were hygiene factors, necessary but not sufficient for safe
operation. The operators were having a problem remembering the name of a
particularly important control utility that ramped the reactor temperatures
as the feed rate changed. I changed its name to SEX. They never forgot it.

Metaphors rule!

Cheers
Les

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
[mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
<systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>] On Behalf Of
Smith, Brian E. (ARC-TH)
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:51 AM
To: Steve Tockey; Peter Bernard Ladkin; The System Safety List
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Fwd: Re: power plant user interfaces

Very much agree, Steve, it’s not possible to find a metaphor for every
system.

The point I was trying make is that in, say the flight deck of an
airplane, certain things like how the horizon moves in an ADI and how the
landing gear lever is designed (some with little wheels on the end to
remind pilots what system the lever controls without having to look) and
how it moves positionally - up or down - serve as an intuitive HMI
metaphors for the real world outside or the associated airborne system.

See: Why the wheel on landing gear levers?
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/147082/

I would argue that arrows and altitude/airspeed speed tapes on cockpit
PFDs are possibly at the same level as the landing-gear lever design.

Metaphors can exist at multiple levels.  At each level, they should as you
say, create a situation where people don't even realize a difference.

Clear as mud?

B

On 7/15/15, 9:23 AM, "Steve Tockey" <Steve.Tockey at construx.com> wrote:

The whole point of a metaphor is to take something that the person is

already familiar with--like how a railroad switching yard works--and use

that to help them understand something they don't know about--like how a

network router works. In fact, network routers and railroad switching

yards are entire different under the covers, but it's much easier for the

person to understand routers in terms of switching yards.

Effective HMI metaphors would be unlikely to be at the level of arrows,

needles, etc. The metaphor should be at a much higher level. Amazon.com's

"shopping cart" metaphor is a perfect example of proper use of a metaphor

in UI. There's no such thing as a shopping cart in the client-server code

running when you shop at Amazon.com. But you're already familiar with

them, so it helps you deal with using the system: add to cart, remove from

cart, proceed to check out, … It's such an effective metaphor that most

people don't even realize a difference.

Note, however, the shopping cart metaphor would be entirely useless for a

user who was only familiar with the "bazaar" style of shopping: go to one

vendor for this, another vendor for that, haggle over prices, …

When there is an effective metaphor, it can be amazingly effective. It's

just not always possible to find such a metaphor for every system.

-- steve

-----Original Message-----

From: <systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> on behalf of

"Smith, Brian E. (ARC-TH)" <brian.e.smith at nasa.gov>

Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 8:19 AM

To: Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at rvs.uni-bielefeld.de>, The System Safety

List <systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>

Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Fwd: Re:  power plant user interfaces

It seems to me that HMI "metaphors" can take the form of arrows, needles,

and/or moving tapes pointing in an intuitive directions (that one might

expect in other real-world situations) and auditory cues that come from

the right direction.  Also the order in which information is provided to

the operator can ³metaphorically² represent the operator¹s cognitive model

of how pipes are arranged or valves are located in a processing plant for

example.

Brian Smith

On 7/14/15, 10:20 PM, "Peter Bernard Ladkin" <ladkin at rvs.uni-bielefeld.de>

wrote:

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On 2015-07-15 03:12 , Les Chambers wrote:

So my point is: the key to a good HMI is excellent metaphor design.

That does not fit in any way what I and colleagues have done or have been

doing in HMI for the

last couple of decades (and for some of them longer). There is a fair

amount of math and logic

involved. No metaphors.

Key to good HMI is rigorous formal analysis. There are other key

processes.

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

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