Personality, Patterns, and Principles are key Pillars to User Interface and User Experience

I was watching a Microsoft session on user interface, and they spelled out the concept of the “3 Ps” in their design. I thought it would be effective to pass it on with commentary:

Personality: the visual interactive design

Patterns: Common interface patterns

Principles: the guidelines by which you set out UIs e.g. colors, fonts etc.

The three Ps we overlook in defining the report, the dashboard or user interface in the industrial world, the three Ps are not new, many of applying them without realizing.

Personality: This is a way in which the user interface interacts with the role and user, which requires the designer to define the targeted user, and make sure they understand the experience effective experience, knowledge and activities the role has. If you take the “activities" approach again understand the expect interaction, to create efficient decisions and actions, so that the system is intuitive. This means in different cultures based on regions the personality may change, certainly the personality between a dashboard for a maintenance engineer vs. production management is very different relative interaction. In 2014, the explosion of mobile applications for different "activities" /"roles" will occur instead of generic applications for the industrial market. This does not mean generic is wrong, but I firmly believe that if there is a choice between a specific application for an activity vs. a generic the specific will chosen as it will have the personality to suite the effective execution of that "activity".

Patterns: The user interface patterns are also key, to make the experience intuitive and familiar the layout, arrangement patterns need to be set out. Even though the actions maybe different the navigation, experience of where and how to find or execute something should not take learning when swap pining between different activities. These patterns should go across roles and “activities".

Principles: This again is key for familiar and consistent experience. Guidelines for use of color, fonts, backgrounds etc. are, and important comfort factor as the user enters and works with the system.

With so many different user experiences the knowledge worker interacts with today from reports, dashboards to interactive screens across desktops, pads, to mobile to notifications and video. All designed by different content developers and made available to knowledge worker community of the company. Increasingly the content developer will not know the content consumer other than by “activity" and role, as the host for the content will be user interface hosting frameworks (example the portal) that host, layout and enable navigation of content that is created elsewhere. So a piece of content for activity could be hosted in a desktop, then a PDA, then a web applicant all the same time, with the user traversing between "at will". To achieve a smooth, effective transition the 3 Ps in user experience for content design are key, far more important than in the last 20 years. Combine this with the dynamic nature of the workforce community initiative, familiar experiences will a pillar for competitive advantage. It is important that these standards can be managed, and evolved, we are investing alot in tools to make this managed easier and effective.

Big Data requires Pattern Awareness to Provide Situational Awareness

2012 saw the rise in what I call “Industrial Information Systems, Projects”. You may say “rubbish”, the whole historian, and information business has been around for years, and the answer is true. Today these projects are different dealing with a “lake of data”, delivering to more people, of different roles typically not even aware of what an historian is drawing data from many different sources including historians, xml files, transactional data sources such as MES and Batch systems, alarm, event systems, MS Excel and customer odd databases, as well real-time data. There is no one supplier, one source, or structure to this data. The challenge is when the context and knowledge of the data is retiring from the companies, but the size of internal community of roles and workers requiring access is increasing. How often I have been asked and discussed the issue of data validation and data awareness, vs architecture, and technologies at tossed into conversation hoping for a “silver bullet”, but I believe the solution comes with new capabilities like “Big Data” but also evolutions in existing industrial implementations, with a more holistic design!

I believe the growth will accelerate in “Industrial Information Systems, Projects” during 2013, and beyond, but this is not about delivering reports and information, it is about “empowering” the increased community in  business in making real-time decisions, based on real-time trustworthy, effective industrial information, no matter their location. I continue to get surprised by the notion that the solution is an Enterprise Historian on top of the existing system, acting as a data warehouse. I ‘Scratch my head” and usually “ask how to you know the data is valid, in context, and comparable. Too often it is a blank look they were lead to believe the data in or supplied from their SCADA, lower level historians, etc. is the only thing they need to access. Key to understanding is the ability to detect patterns, across data, but there needs to be enough context to allow the evolving big data tools to enable detection of patterns.

 

Last week this blog discussed exception based “self aware” models required in today’s proactive operational/ supervisory systems, especially as devices grow in intelligence capability. This model is also key to putting things in context enough to enable this analysis and patterns to be seen way further than process analysis. Big data concepts of pattern analysis, save that pattern, and now have it as auto detect on a similar pattern happening again, triggering an operational process that will continue a proven procedure to resolution, guiding the workers involved interacting in a consistent and pro active manner with the objective for early detection and fast resolution. This automatic pattern recognition, detection, and embedded procedure are one key aspect of the modern situational awareness concept. Building on last week’s blog concepts of the “self aware” model, if these smart devices and processes include a pattern recognition capability as part of the “self” intelligence, the shift is a response from the “as is” status to the ‘to be”. The diagram below shows a significant opportunity for improvement with the two “value of early corrective action” lines  effectively illustrating the value gain in early detection and pro active correct action.

The diagram illustrates how a condition over time “x axis” changes in cost/ value through time, and how the traditional alarm systems are in the “as is” state, and the whole objective to “SITUATIONAL AWARENESS” is to shift to the “to be “ state.