From the old to the new: designing control with the user in mind

Voice communication systems are used by air traffic control (ATC) centres and military command and control centres for their vital radio and telephone communications. These large and complex systems are parameterised, controlled and monitored by a technical monitoring and control system (TMCS), used by a diverse group of users. For our new voice communication system we also set out to design and build a new TMCS. The now three years old TMCS could not support the new requirements; and the graphical user interface (GUI) was not satisfactory anymore. This paper discusses the user and task-oriented design of the new TMCS GUI. Primary focus was improving the user and customer satisfaction and efficiency in performing common tasks. For this, the current users of the old TMCS, the prospective users of the new TMCS and the tasks they performed were taken as the basis for the new TMCS GUI. Understanding the users and their tasks lead to dividing up the TMCS GUI from one, monolithic complex program into several task oriented autonomous packages. User interface standards and technical constraints also had their impact on the design. This paper shows how a task and user oriented design can be carried out; and what are considered important aspects of a GUI for monitoring and controlling a complex system