The use of a security system in control rooms: from practice to design consequences

To facilitate more effective security operations, the Philips scalable security system (CSS) integrates the information flow from several security subsystems (fire, intrusion, video cameras, elevators etc.) onto one generic user interface available on several workstations. The system is in use at over 70 sites (banks, museums etc.) for more than ten years. This paper will report on ongoing work on evaluating and re-designing the CSS user interface. This is done from an holistic point of view which takes into account the whole control room working environment and not only the user interface in isolation. From a characterisation of operator work in control rooms based on task analysis preliminary consequences for interface and control room design are formulated