Driving Efficiency Through UI/UX and HMI Innovation

Data has become easy to collect, yet hard to manage and display. Plant personnel must be able to quickly identify trends, bottlenecks, and potential problems without parsing through large datasets manually or navigating complex interfaces. Therefore, automation system engineers must consider the User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX), particularly the design of the Human-Machine Interface (HMI), to create intuitive ways to display data. A well-designed HMI displays trends and relevant production data, allowing the user to quickly identify problems and initiate troubleshooting, thereby streamlining the workflow and providing actionable steps to ensure smooth operations.

Both the operational and business sides require well-designed HMIs. Operators, who run and maintain the equipment, need to be able to assess machine health through intuitive displays quickly. Business managers also need to access data to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the organization's investment strategies and financial needs.

Top 3 UI/UX Priorities for Operators

Operators serve as the critical interface between product design and a plant’s bottom line. They make decisions that directly affect safety, quality, and throughput. When forced to navigate a clunky HMI to find particular performance metrics, the result can be extended downtime, unplanned maintenance, reduced product quality, and even increased risk of injury. Prioritizing UI/UX for operators leads to safer, faster, and more reliable plant performance.

Intuitive Interfaces

Many decisions are made in a matter of seconds, and building an intuitive interface ensures that operators have the relevant information needed to make an informed decision. Intuitive interfacing means placing controls and indicators in logical positions, using a hierarchy that emphasizes key features through size and visual prominence. For example, emergency stop buttons should be easily identifiable by their large size and distinctive red color, ensuring quick activation in urgent situations.

Interface consistency is also crucial for usability. Consider a tabbed display — each tab should follow a uniform structure to minimize the operator's need to search for critical information. Visual elements such as color schemes, prompts, and other UI/UX components should remain consistent across the platform, and, where appropriate, reflect the design of corresponding physical hardware.

Contextual Clues

Software UI/UX should be designed to provide some context for the data and signals being collected. Simply printing a value to the display does little to assist the operator in understanding the system. Instead, a chart with historical or related values allows the operator to determine whether a process variable has reached steady state or identify how a key metric is trending.

In addition to accessing historical data, the ability to interface with other databases and scheduling applications is also essential. Suppose a variable is trending downwards, and preventative maintenance should be scheduled. If an operator can see the maintenance schedule or even initiate the task in a few clicks, it can lead to a more optimized equipment schedule.

High-Performance HMI

While textual and numerical data are valuable, visual indicators often enable faster decision-making. For instance, an on-screen thermometer approaching the upper limit of its range communicates a potential overtemperature condition more effectively than a numerical value alone. Similarly, a visual representation of a nearly full tank is more intuitive for an operator than knowing how many gallons are in the tank.

High-performance HMIs also include familiar features such as the use of color, redundant coding, moving analog indicators, and radar charts. Sparklines can provide additional context by showing data trends at a glance. These visual tools help operators quickly spot irregularities and make informed decisions, leading to faster troubleshooting and improved efficiency.

Figure 1. Intuitive HMI highlighting system issues: Pump 2 is inactive (red indicator, zero flow) with an orange alert flag; day tank nearing capacity, shown by a red marker and high level on the graph. Image courtesy of Inductive Automation.

Top 3 UI/UX Priorities for Business

Making the HMI easier to use with better UI/UX helps managers see important data faster and more clearly. When interfaces are poorly designed, important metrics can be overlooked or misunderstood, leading to less effective judgment regarding scheduling, resource planning, or future investments. A well-designed HMI ensures greater visibility, supports alignment between departments, and enables more confident, data-driven decision-making.

User-Centered

Operators often track different metrics than engineers or management. An operator may need to know the input current to a motor, but management wants to know the uptime of the machine. Therefore, UI/UX must match the user’s needs, providing them with the most relevant data for their part of the operation. As a result, each person or group can get the key process indicators (KPIs) for their specific objective.

To ensure effectiveness, comprehensive research must be conducted to identify the specific KPIs required by each user group. From there, HMIs are tested and refined to optimize their functionality according to the distinct needs of a department.

Mobile Operations

Today’s industry relies on remote operation. The era of operators remaining physically present at machines throughout their entire shift has passed; it is just as likely that a process decision is made by an engineer sitting in the cafeteria. Therefore, secure, portable data access is essential.

One of the best ways to handle remote data access and process control is to make HTML and web-based applications. These can be accessed by a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Web-based applications can be made platform-independent, eliminating concerns related to operating systems, device manufacturers, or other barriers that might restrict access.

Figure 2. Web-based applications make HMIs platform-independent. Image courtesy of Induction Automation.

The mobile operation should also support the integration of additional hardware, such as cameras for visual inspection of process parameters, capturing images, scanning QR codes, and other data collection methods. GPS devices can facilitate asset tracking, geofencing, and related functions, while Bluetooth LE enables data exchange with the engineer’s tablet or smartphone.

Consider a “no flow” alarm. An engineer can quickly access a camera view of the sight glass to determine whether the problem stems from a faulty flow meter or a genuine flow issue.

Simple Decision-Making

Every part of the decision-making process needs to be simple and unambiguous. Operators and engineers alike should not have to hunt through tabs and complex navigation to find what they need. This includes all parts of the HMI- from logging into the system, to searching databases, to exporting and presenting data.

One way to accomplish this is through the use of dynamic dashboards. These dashboards display the information that is required for a certain set of decisions. When a new set of decisions is required, a different dashboard appears. Some of these dashboards are customizable so that users can add or subtract indicators or controls as needed.

Empowering Industry Through Designed HMIs

Inductive Automation has been developing software for creating intuitive HMIs for over 20 years and has worked with many industries and markets in over 140 countries. Their resources can make the difference between a well-planned, efficient automated system and a cumbersome and frustrating UI/UX. For more information on designing effective SCADA systems, visit the Inductive Automation website. Contact their team of experts at [email protected] or call 1-800-266-7798 to discuss the specific needs for your next HMI.