Comparing display integration strategies for control of a simple steam plant

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are becoming increasingly common for application software in process control. By necessity, process control applications manage numerous complex constraints. Conventional interfaces display the states of a system without conveying the constraints which drastically reduce the evolutions which must be considered. The authors´ model resolves this difficulty by presenting system parameters in the context of ecological constraints mirroring those of the underlying process. A simulation of a simple steam plant with five different GUIs was used in this experiment. The displays were a conventional dials display, a mimic display, an object display, a seesaw analogue and a fluid-tank analogue. Poor over-all performance in maintaining specified values was found for the seesaw and the object displays. The dials and the mimic displays performed similarly with greater accuracy. The best control was observed in the experimental fluid-tanks display. These findings are consistent with the authors´ hypotheses. For over-all failure detection there were few differences between the dials, object and fluid-tank. The seesaw display led the way with false alarms and latency of detection. The mimic display produced average latencies but with poorer accuracy