Resumen de A design pattern language to assist the design of alarm visualizations for operating control systems
Rosa María Romero Gómez
With the growing emphasis on visualization as a mechanism for analysing and exploring large and complex data sets, visualization research has recognized the need of reusing prior design knowledge instead of starting from scratch. This fact is especially relevant in designing control systems in which alarm visualizations are key artefacts for human operators to maintain an awareness of the state of the process under control. In this context, designers are required to face two fundamental recurrent design challenges related to visual scalability and sense making issues, which involve having design knowledge from different knowledge areas including Alarm Management, Human Factors, and Visualization Design. Nevertheless, no single designer can be an expert in every relevant knowledge area, and becoming proficient may require years of experience. One relevant approach to assist in such multi-dimensional design process is to reuse prior design knowledge, which supports and amplifies designers’ abilities of design generation. However, existing design knowledge reuse approaches for alarm visualization design can be too abstract, not comprehensive enough, and loosely coupled, being difficult to be applied by non-experienced designers. In this research work, such limitations are addressed by developing a design pattern language as a fitting design knowledge reuse approach to disseminate reusable alarm visualization design knowledge. Derived from both a review of descriptive models and design rules for Alarm Management, Human Factors, and Visualization Design and two case studies framed within the context of two different projects, Energos and Emercien, this research work describes the design space for alarm visualization design. Then, taking such characterization of the design space into account and after an extensive review of relevant sources in the aforementioned knowledge areas, this research work systematizes reusable design knowledge for alarm visualization design through the definition of the design pattern language. The structure and elements of this design pattern language have been, respectively, analytically analized and evaluated by expert designers. This design pattern language has been also applied in different contexts. It demonstrates the feasibility of this design pattern language to be used across application domains. Finally, it has been successfully used by non-experienced designers. It demonstrates the utility of the design pattern language to provide non-experienced designers with an easy access to the existing body of knowledge of recognized alarm visualization design solutions for operating control systems and open up interesting lines for future research.
