What will your customers think of the Ultimate HMI design layout?

Controlglobal.com has a very interesting written article by a consultant on HMI layout and design.

http://www.controlglobal.com/articles/2011/the-ultimate-hmi.html

Here's his idea of ultimate HMI design:


Gray scale, no moving pump rotors, no colored pipes, pretty impressive huh?

I'm wondering, will your customers buy into it?

That is horrible. Too much on one screen. TOO MUCH. And i prefer some sort of graphic representation of system, showing where anything is in the system. With some things I do agree with him, but not all.

Also few colours are needed, like green for opened valve, piperoute etc. grey for not opened.

Definitely too much on one screen. I might be able to buy in to the use of less color but I still prefer different colors to show system status.

That is very common in the process world.

As an overview, I can somewhat agree. But should have additional supporting screens depicting more detail the further into the system you go.

I do agree, and implement, equipment status.

Key point in all this is consistency. Equipment status colors should be consistent.
Any alarming should bring attention or focus to it ... seperate colors from equipment status.

danw said:

Controlglobal.com has a very interesting written article by a consultant on HMI layout and design.

Click to expand...

No need to read any further. Articles written by people that can't actually be employed in any industry they write about aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on.

Consultants are just school and business failures that have enough smarts to find a print shop to make up some cards.

I TOTALLY agree with everything that he writes about grey scale, 2D, and avoiding unnecessary glitz.

About too much or too little:
It depends on the task. It makes sense to show everything that you need to know at any given time. To have to browse through a lot of screens is also painful.
The screen that he has shown as an example is not so extreme to my opinion. Obviously he has large monitors in mind, and not small operator panels.

rdrast said:

No need to read any further. Articles written by people that can't actually be employed in any industry they write about aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on.

Consultants are just school and business failures that have enough smarts to find a print shop to make up some cards.

Click to expand...

I take exception to this.
I have been a practitioner for over 15 years, and have progressed though my career to what would be a Principle Engineer or a Consultant (in the outside world).

I totally agree with the High Performance HMI principles and the Alarm Management principles that are driving factors in a lot of systems.

If you are not familiar, I suggest that you read up on it. It can make a world of difference if you ever have to investigate an incident (whether it be an internal investigation, or one from an outside agency - like OSHA, EPA, CCB, etc).

Not sure about the greyscale, but I agree with everything else he writes.

Consistency, words and pics, general to specific, all those are good practice IMO. I also ALWAYS use a specific, different color for HMI PBs that change screens so that there is never a question as to whether pressing *THAT* button will trigger something on the machine or in the cell vs. bringing up another screen.

Colors... well, I have to admit that I like to use green and red on my top-level screens. "Green Screen" I can see at a glance, from a distance, that nothing requires immediate attention. And, I often "grey out" equipment that is not available at that instant in the cell or on the machine. I have some fairly complicated process cells where I essentially replicated the PLC IKs on HMI pushbuttons. If the PB is aqua with black lettering, then pressing it will actuate the equipment or take some action. If grey with white lettering, no. This cell has enough options that *I* need that probably more than the OPRs since even though I programmed it, I don't work with it every day!

Anyway, it's an interesting article. I do tend to agree that a photo-realistic graphic of the system, or a straight copy of the ACAD P&ID, is not usually the best way to go. His grey-scale screen... is busy, but it's blocked out well. If it's showing the entire process or a significant unit, well OK. Like Jesper said, that's not something that you'd put on a 6-in screen. I hope! But from an engineering viewpoint, I like his layout of process info at the top, no pictograph. The picture or P&ID might be great on another screen to show you the location of the alarmed channel, or it's relationship to other stuff in the system, but to look at the P&ID with little numbers and such next to valves, flowmeters, pumps, tanks, etc yeah that can be slow to absorb.

I would still tend to use colors, but I agree that consistency and only a few are important. And, you need words to go with the colors given that some people are color blind and that standards can vary across industries.

The indicators making a pattern are good too... I don't have much process stuff (as that greyscale screen is showing) but it's a good idea. That is a lot better than just a numeric indicator on the screen, that maybe changes colors for H-L and HH-LL. If you had one or two process variables, not really a big deal either way, but if 10 or 20 or more, then I think his analog scales are a good idea. I don't mind the screen, it's full but if it gives me the top level view quickly and consistently, fine.

After my first post I went and read his article a little deeper.
I agree with his opinion about grey backgrounds in general, and avoid the stop=red, run/active=green combo.
I use this combination:
stop/inactive=dark grey.
run/active=bright green.
problems=bright red.
In this way what is active or needs attention sticks out with a bright color.
But I do not agree with run/active=white.
White color is associated with empty background, and does not signal anything special.
Another thing is that I adjust my backgrounds to a darker grey color than the standard grey in Windows. The standard grey windows background for forms is too bright for the red or green to highlight.
At the same time I adjust the green and red to be a little bit brighter than neutral. Again, for these colors to be able to stick out and draw attention against the grey background.

I worked with these guys from PAS on my last project. We had the HMIs all done and ready to be rolled out and then our partner Engineering firm on the project brought these guys in and pretty much made us switch the entire mines HMI screens over to this exact layout. It ended up delaying the project 3 or more months to get all the screens converted as well as the background alarming and trending. Since then I have adopted some of the color schemes that they wanted us to use on the project I am working on now but have not adopted the white as running.

I stuck with a white no status, dark green running and Red as alarm or error.

The theory does make sense with regard to focusing in on a problem if everything is similar in color and a blazing red icon comes flashing on the screen you can home in on it quickly but most HMI companies offer these nice 3d libraries to make you screens that do not follow this philosophy so you end up making a lot of your own graphics to stick to the PAS system.

To each his own. K.I.S.S is the way I look at it.

That's the pedagogic way. Simple boxes, circles and lines on a greyboard. Like a teacher does it.

Has anyone on the Forum read that "High Performance HMI Handbook", written by PAS and published by the ISA ?

It's a little funny that the "Not Like This" HMI display in the ControlGlobal article is a blue-washed version of the screenshot in the Perceptual Edge article.

I wonder how well these principles scale down to an eight-inch operator interface terminal.

Ken Roach said:

Has anyone on the Forum read that "High Performance HMI Handbook", written by PAS and published by the ISA ?

It's a little funny that the "Not Like This" HMI display in the ControlGlobal article is a blue-washed version of the screenshot in the Perceptual Edge article.

I wonder how well these principles scale down to an eight-inch operator interface terminal.

Click to expand...

I have.
And have also read the "Alarm Management Handbook" by the same group.
After implementing the majority of the concepts, our operations department has consistent coloring schemes, alarming, and displays.
As for alarming, we have reduced the "alarming" to operations from a rate of over 3000 per week, to just around 250. This was all done with alarm rationalization activities along with conditionalizing alarms.

I wonder how well these principles scale down to an eight-inch operator interface terminal

Click to expand...

How about a six inch monochrome?

I tend to go with greyscale screens, but I use green/red indicators combined with ON/OFF text.

However, I noticed that the example greyscale screen has a number of circular trend charts. Circular chart recorders are an acceptable simple way to do chart recording on a paper/pen recorder, but on a computer graphic screen that is just plain silly.

The example greyscale screen is also a little too busy, but some of the other screens in teh article are good screens.