HMI Design Best Practices

Join Date
Mar 2016
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Raleigh
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88
I am looking for some reference material to help me communicate what we want our system integrator to provide as far as SCADA graphics, best practices in design and high performance graphics/situational awareness. A website would be great. I'm having trouble communicating what exactly the expectation is. I know what I don't want. But communicating exactly what we want is a little difficult.

We are running WW System Platform 2014R2. I have seen some very impressive high performance graphics and I would like some of those features built into the SCADA app. I want the SCADA screens to provide as much useful information as possible , in a well thought out manner that is intuitive to an operator.

Just that easy, right?
 
If you want easy:

(1) Require the integrator to use the WW Situational Awareness library
https://www.wonderware.com/hmi-scada/system-platform/features/

(2) The HMI must meet all of the priority #1 and #2 guidelines in ASM Consortium Effective Operator Design (book)
You can find that on Amazon.

Maybe you back off on a few of the #2 priorities, but I don't know your system or which ones you could leave out.
Anyway, the ASM book is well written to be used as a reference book, HMI specification, and checklist for operator performance.

Give it a try.
 
As an Integrator, we had a client that did not respond when we sent out screenshots during development. After we had the project complete and testing onsite he came to us and said: "I don't know what I want, but I know it is not that". Classic customer quote.....So it's nice to see you are taking initiative and getting ahead of this before it is too late.

I agree Situational Awareness graphics would be the way to go with App Server if starting from scratch and the process is not discrete i.e. Conveyor control etc.... I would stay away from the gradients and flashy graphics because as an Application Server Certified Designer, we have had nothing but issues with slow screen response times with those types of "flashy" graphics.
 
This topic has me curious.. Do you think it would be better to provide specifics like libraries, examples of how data should be displayed, color schemes, etc.?

Some references we've used...
http://www.yokogawausersconference.com/uploads/3/1/8/5/3185440/mesatutorial_-_isa101_hmiworkshop.pdf

http://www.opto22.com/documents/2061_High_Performance_HMI_white_paper.pdf

Or would it be better to just provide principles the design should follow?

Best design book I've read was the 2013 edition of the Design of Everyday Things. Don Norman's principles on affordances, signifiers, action cycle, design cycle, gulf of execution/evaluation, mapping, etc. are great principles to design by.
 
Standards

I have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to creating HMI and PLC standards for big and small organisations.

It honestly goes much further than graphics. To properly asses what you need from your control system graphics you need to understand your business processes in and out.

SCADA these days have many stakeholders depending on how your organisation operated. For one site we have currently i can count 26 different user groups all with different requirements and complexity.

There is no handbook that is going to give you these answers, this is something you need to asses and understand. Its up to you to determine what your stakeholders require, an integrator develops code , he doesnt understand each business he does work for.

From a guidelines perspective i think ASM and the High Performance HMI handbook make the most sense. What people tend to forget is the alarm management, plant specific processes and procedures. I would spend as much time looking at the correct analysis tools for this to assist in keeping the SCADA usable and intuitive for a controller.

Other things to consider is if its a green fields/brown field project. Do you have the freedom to do something brand spanking new?

In the base of brown fields i think leveraging things that are known to your personnel are the best way to go. Even if its not perfect its what the business knows. And believe it or not in our industry you struggle to teach an old dog new tricks.

Introducing something completely new will be a hard sell , i have seen this over and over. Half the battle is convincing the stakeholders.

Operator Training
What learning curve will be involved in getting the best out of the standards you create for your industrial control system.

Engineering Training
How well will you maintenance personnel adapt to what you are creating?

Mass development
How easy is it to roll out new code/screens/blocks, does your integrator provide tools to build code structures?

Performance
Make sure your integrator scales his work up. You wont see a delay with one graphic but put a 1000 on a page and see the difference. This just helps them iron out "heavy" code objects/graphics. Performance always come at the end of a project never at the start.

My last comment is probably the most important. While you are creating these Graphics/Standards blocks whatever. Always and i mean always engage your clients (stakeholders). If they feel they had input into the design it will be easier to accept and adapt to the graphics.
 
Last edited:
It honestly goes much further than graphics.
Not yet. You'll scare them away!


This topic has me curious.. Do you think it would be better to provide specifics like libraries, examples of how data should be displayed, color schemes, etc.?

Some references we've used...
http://www.yokogawausersconference.com/uploads/3/1/8/5/3185440/mesatutorial_-_isa101_hmiworkshop.pdf

http://www.opto22.com/documents/2061_High_Performance_HMI_white_paper.pdf

Or would it be better to just provide principles the design should follow?

Better to give specifics, libraries and examples to your supplier.
But you need to know the principles if you want to create an HMI spec.

The ASM book is more about specifics. "Do this, priority 1-2-3, checklist, etc."
You can use that as is without learning the principles.

The PAS High Performance HMI book is more about the principles and the why. That is great to help you create your own libraries, specs, etc.


Buy and read either one of those first. After you get from "no specs" over to "aha!" then the post from RheinhardtP makes sense. There's a lot of wisdom there in that post: going from libraries to running HMI.
 

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