Emerson’s Approach to Human Centered Design Makes Automation Easier

SEPTEMBER, 2010Emerson’s Approach to Human Centered Design Makes Automation Easier Executive Summary...3 Human Centered Design Concepts in Process Automation...4 Emerson Forms Human Cent

SEPTEMBER, 2010

Emerson’s Approach to Human Centered Design Makes Automation Easier

Executive Summary 3

Human Centered Design Concepts in Process Automation 4

Emerson Forms Human Centered Design Institute 6

The Economic Impact of Human Centered Design 7

AMS Device Manager and Device Dashboards 8

Conclusions and Recommendations 11

The Chemical Manufacturer’s Association Reports that 26 Percent of

Plant Incidents are Due to Operator Error

AMS Device Manager Dashboard: Note How Device Status and PV are the

Emerson Process Management is one of the

most active automation suppliers when it

comes to embedding HCD principles into its

offerings HCD principles have been

heavily embedded in a series of new

products and applications that were part of

the DeltaV Version 11 release

Executive Summary

When you stay at a hotel, do you use the alarm clock that is provided for you, or do you rely on your cell phone or some travel clock that you bring with you? The myriad of buttons and features

on most hotel alarm clocks can prevent you from even attempting

to set an alarm Automation products and applications are very much the same Layer upon layer of functions and options that can be time consuming and complex to wade through, especially when you are going to spend most of your time doing maybe 20 percent of the functions offered in a certain application

Human Centered Design (HCD), also known as User Centered Design (UCD), is the science of stripping away complexity and letting humans do what humans need to do with any given application or device (for purposes of this paper we’ll call it HCD) HCD is a well established discipline in the world of design, and has

been applied to everything from everyday products like vegetable peelers to fighter jets and complex software applications In North America, the most experienced people in the workforce are retiring in droves and a smaller pool of less experienced workers to replace them In other regions, there simply aren’t enough experienced people available The time is right to apply HCD principles to process automation

Emerson Process Management is one of the most active automation suppliers when it comes to embedding HCD principles into its offerings The company formed the Human Centered Design Institute through a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and the Center for Operator Performance with an eye toward making it easier for people to use process automation systems, applications, and devices HCD principles have been heavily embedded in a series of new products and applications that were part of the DeltaV Version 11 release These include AMS Device Manager dashboards for some 50 devices and a newly designed HART 475 handheld communicator, which is a de facto standard in the industry today

Employing HCD concepts, Emerson is making it easier and more intuitive for end users to get the information they need and to perform the functions that need to be performed Products are designed to make it even easier for those tasks that are performed most often

Human Centered Design Concepts in Process Automation

Products and applications in process automation are known for their complexity Most are designed by engineers who thrive on complexity Large sets of features and functionality are driven into these products, but how often do we use all of these features and functions? Anyone who has sat through a demonstration of

an application at a trade fair can recall the salesperson that went

on and on about the layers of functionality and features in their product, but could you remember how to get at all the crucial functions and features after you saw the demonstration?

Aside from easy access to information, how well is this information presented to the end user? Use of color, presentation on the screen, dashboards, and other techniques can all make information readily accessible and tasks easier to perform Of course, misapplication can have just the opposite effect Many users take it as a personal challenge to use every color in the visible spectrum in their HMI design

Human Centered Design is a process through which products are designed around how the user does their job The reasoning is that if products and applications are designed around the way that people actually work, they will also be easier to use It also means designing products with an eye toward getting the right information quickly and at the right time, which means that alerts and alarms must be actionable and presented in such a manner that the user can be aware of the issue Not incorporating HCD can make you oblivious to opportunities when it comes to improving work processes Incorporating HCD into the design

process can result in an almost 82 percent reduction in the time it takes to do routine tasks

HCD Principles

HCD principles include things like visibility, accessibility, and context Visibility means that information should be prioritized so the most important information is the most visible This could mean anything from the placement of bits of information on a screen to color schemes to types of graphs Accessibility means that the right information is found quickly and easily – the user only sees the things they need to see when they are trying to complete a given task Context means that people get information that is relevant to their job in a manner that is actionable

HCD is more than just a design concept The ISO 9241-21:2010 standard “provides requirements and recommendations for human centered design principles and activities throughout the lifecycle of computer-based interactive systems.” With so much activity in this discipline and its potential impact on plant maintenance and operations, it is imperative the process automation suppliers embrace HCD concepts as part of their own design principles and user experience The time has come to strip away the often needless complexity of automation applications

It’s the Operators!

Ultimately, HCD is about the people who use the technology and interface with it This is a fundamental departure from traditional application design in the world of process automation, which is heavily influenced by development engineers and their propensity

to drive maximum features and functions into products How many automation suppliers do you know that have actually removed features from a product because they felt it compromised the ability of the end user to do their job effectively? When an inexperienced operator is asked to navigate through each application to find basic data about the device such as status, diagnostic alerts, and other information that would most

likely be used by an operator or instrument technician, how well

do you think they could find it?

Demographic Changes Require Human Centered Design

The current demographic picture of workers in the process automation related fields is troubling The situation is true for both mature industrialized economies like North America and Western Europe and for rapidly developing parts of the world like China and India In the US, for example, worker retirements, continued downsizing, and a lack of new talent entering the workforce are all converging to create a skilled labor crunch According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), for example,

25 percent of all “current engineers, geoscientists, multi-skilled maintenance professionals, process and production operators, and health and safety professionals” are currently ready to retire In China and India, there simply are not enough highly skilled people

to supply the growing installed base of process plants

A Human Centered Design approach will be required to fit the profile of the less experienced worker with responsibility over more areas of the plant than ever before Human centered design reduces training costs because information is more readily accessible and products are just easier to use Only the relevant information is presented to the end user

Emerson Forms Human Centered Design Institute

Emerson’s involvement in Human Centered Design goes back many years Several years ago, the company sent approximately

60 of its engineers through the Human Computer Interaction Institute program at Carnegie Mellon University for HCD immersion training In 2009, Emerson decided to start its own Human Centered Design Institute in partnership with CMU and the Center for Operator Performance The formation of the HCD Institute is the product of more than 5 years of customer work-practice analysis, new product development re-engineering and

organizational training

Personas and Stakeholder Maps

The primary goal of Emerson’s Human Centered Design Institute is

to “ensure that user work practices and improved task completion (usability or workforce productivity) are at the heart of every new product that Emerson introduces.”As part of its initial release of HCD intensive offerings, Emerson analyzed the day-to-day operations of many different stakeholders in the plant, creating multiple unique “personas” ranging from operators to instrument technicians Each of these personas has specific tasks that must

be accomplished Designing their applications around the requirements of these specific plant roles and focusing on the

Emerson Created Many “Personas” that Embody the Typical Roles and

Responsibilities of Key People in the Plant

repetitive tasks that these operators and maintenance staff perform is an essential step towards implementation of HCD in process automation In addition to the stakeholder maps and personas, Emerson is performing extensive usability testing and observational research to further develop its HCD program

The electronic marshalling available in DeltaV Version 11 was also heavily influenced by Emerson’s HCD focus Version 11 also includes a concept called Dynamos, which are available out of the box and allow operators to see things like percent in range indication, PV SP deviations, flexible tag name displays, interlock conditions, and other bits of information, all while incorporating the improved use of color and control information enabled by the Human Centered Design approach

The Economic Impact of Human Centered Design

Talk of Human Centered Design typically revolves around those who use technology and making their experience better, but employing HCD also has an economic impact on the enterprise Products built according to HCD principles reduce the amount of time it takes to do routine tasks, which frees people up to do more value added work HCD can also results in faster time to startup if you are doing a new project or are in the middle of a maintenance turnaround because configuration and commissioning times are significantly reduced Operator error accounts for a significant portion of plant incidents Employing HCD principles results in fewer operator errors because only the relevant information is presented to the operator in a contextual and actionable manner HCD Principles also result in reduced unplanned downtime because problems are identified and addressed more easily and rapidly Unplanned downtime currently represents between 2 and

5 percent of all production in the process industries, and a single incident of unplanned downtime can wipe out plant profit for the entire year ARC estimates 80 percent of these production losses

are preventable and 40 percent of those preventable losses result

of human or operator error

The ability react to abnormal situations also increases significantly when you have easier access to the information you need Losses accrue not only from reduced throughput from unplanned shutdowns, but also from off-spec production, equipment damage, reduction in asset availability, disruptions to schedules, safety hazards, and environmental remediation Unscheduled shut downs and slowdowns are the biggest performance issues facing the heavy process industries

AMS Device Manager and Device Dashboards

A key product of Emerson’s investment in Human Centered Design

is the new series of AMS Device Manager Dashboards AMS Device Manager is a key component of Emerson’s AMS Suite of plant asset management (PAM) applications, which use the data from intelligent field devices and plant equipment to create

proactive maintenance strategies in addition

to doing a wide range

of other instrument related tasks AMS

provides a universal window into the health of intelligent field devices It takes real time condition data from devices so plant personnel can respond quickly and make intelligent maintenance decisions AMS is also heavily used during plant commissioning and startup as a tool for checking out and commissioning devices With AMS Device Manager, you can commission and configure instruments and valves, monitor status

Device Dashboards Tell the Operator What the Problem is and How to Fix

It

and alerts, troubleshoot from the control room, perform advanced diagnostics, manage calibration, and automatically document activities

Device Dashboard Overhauls

Just as with any application, there are steps that operators and maintenance personnel perform frequently in AMS Device Manager These include things like device status and diagnostics

Applying HCD principles, Emerson has overhauled the dashboards for over 50 instrument screens that improve their usability for various workers in the plant The dashboards themselves are developed by the people in the instrument division Using the latest EDDL enhancements, Emerson’s instrument experts drew most heavily from the job role of the maintenance technician, Emerson retooled their traditional device screens and instead created “device dashboards” to quantify and qualify the primary tasks that are faced by those technicians These tasks fall into the two primary groups of doing device configuration and commissioning as part of project work and routine maintenance tasks in the field Emerson looked at some of the key field devices sold by the company and figured out the primary things commonly done to that device Once those tasks were identified, they were able to make those tasks more easily accessible to the user for configuration

This may not seem like a big deal if you are reading this on paper

or electronically, but a typical device configurator will give you