• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.75-83
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• 2015

In the virtual prototyping (VP) of digital products, it is important to provide the people involved in product development with the visualization and interaction of the products, and the simulation of their human machine interaction (HMI) behaviors in interactive 3D virtual environments. Especially, for the HMI behavior simulation, it is necessary to represent them properly and to play them back effectively according to user interaction in the virtual environments. In a conventional approach to HMI behavior simulation, user interface (UI) designers use UI design software tools to generate the HMI behavior of a digital product of interest. Due to lack of reusability of the HMI behavior, VP developers need to analyze and integrate it into a VP system for its simulation in a 3D virtual environment. As this approach hinders the effective communication between the UI designers and the VP developers, it is easy to create errors and thereby it takes significant time and effort especially when it is required to represent the HMI behavior to the finest level of detail. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional approach, we propose an approach for representing the HMI behavior of a digital product using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and for reusing it to perform the HMI behavior simulation in 3D virtual environments. Based on the approach, a VP system has been developed and applied for the design evaluation of various products. A case study about the design evaluation is given to show the usefulness of the proposed approach.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.247-270
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• 2009

This paper reviews studies on information searching behavior in process control systems and discusses some implications learned from previous studies for use in human factors studies on nuclear power plants (NPPs) main control rooms (MCRs). Information searching behavior in NPPs depends on expectancy, value, salience, and effort. The first quantitative scanning model developed by Senders for instrument panel monitoring considered bandwidth (change rate) of instruments as a determining factor in scanning behavior. Senders' model was subsequently elaborated by other researchers to account for value in addition to bandwidth. There is also another type of model based on the operator's situation awareness (SA) which has been developed for NPP application. In these SA-based models, situation-event relations or rules on system dynamics are considered the most significant factor forming expectancy. From the review of previous studies it is recommended that, for NPP application, (1) a set of symptomatic information sources including both changed and unchanged symptoms should be considered along with bandwidth as determining factors governing information searching (or visual sampling) behavior; (2) both data-driven monitoring and knowledge-driven monitoring should be considered and balanced in a systematic way; (3) sound models describing mechanisms of cognitive activities during information searching tasks should be developed so as to bridge studies on information searching behavior and design improvement in HMI; (4) the attention-situation awareness (A-SA) modeling approach should be recognized as a promising approach to be examined further; and (5) information displays should be expected to have totally different characteristics in advanced control rooms. Hence much attention should be devoted to information searching behavior including human-machine interface (HMI) design and human cognitive processes.