Human-Centric Approach To Design of Sixthman User-Interface and User-Experience

Grid monitoring devices are important tools to understand unfamiliar dynamic behaviors and operate increasingly complex power systems; however, the benefits of these tools are diminished without effective visualizations. Advances to grid monitoring devices promoted the development of Automated Fault Analysis (AFA) tools, and Dominion’s Sixthman Suite was deployed in 2012. Sixthman was used as a case study to test how human-centric design principles could be applied to the development of the Sixthman user-interface (UI) and user-experience (UX). The case study elucidated how applying “neuroergonomic” principles to UI/UX design can facilitate the development of tools that enhance users’ cognition to optimize decision-making and prevent human errors.

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) was used to atomically model the fault analysis process, identify heuristic processes used in the involved decision sequences, and uncover factors that contribute to extraneous cognitive load. The validity of the heuristics was assessed by comparing them to statistical analysis of historical data. This process enabled the development of categorical “fault estimation profiles” that provide context-specific visualizations to aid real-time decision-making. The analysis also provided a framework with which we can systemize tacit knowledge and intuition-based decisions that are typically learned through experience and lost when members leave an organization.