TABLE OF CONTENTS J. N. Beach
MICRO SWITCH Division, Honeywell Inc., Freeport, Illinois
(Operator Interface Design Rationale)
Kai-Chun Cheng
School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana (Cognitive Skills and Process Control)
Ray E. Eberts
School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana (Adaptation of Manuscript on Cognitive Skills
and Process Control)
Gregory K. McMillan
Solutia Inc., St. Louis, Missouri (Knowledge-Based Operator
Training, Intelligent Alarms)
James A. Odom
Corporate Industrial Design, Honeywell Inc., Minneapolis,
Minnesota (Operator Interface Design Rationale)
Staff
Moore Products Company, Spring House, Pennsylvania
(CRT-Based Graphic Display Diagrams)
The interface between a process or machine and the operator is the primary means for providing dialogue and for introducing human judgment into an otherwise automatic system. Although signals arrive at the interface and, once an operator judgment is made, leave the interface at electronic speeds, the operator responds at a much slower communication rate. Thus the operator, because of human limitations, is a major bottleneck in the overall system. The interface, whether it takes the form of a console, a workstation, or other configuration, must be designed with the principal objective of shortening operator response time. The interface must be customized to the operator, and through a serious training program, the operator must become accustomized to the interface. The interface designer not only considers the hardware interface, but the software interface as well.
Inadequate interface design usually is a result of (1) considering the interface late in the overall system design process, (2) giving short shrift...
