User interface prototype through participatory cognitive task analysis

Abstract

Transition of technology has led to the transformation from human physical strength to the cognitive thinking capability. In fact drastic changes in the technology have changed the research analysis from technical orientation to cognitive analysis. To date, the goal of this study is to design a User Interface (UI) which provides information for the user, to interpret and act upon effectively. In this study, close participation from the experts in the field of manufacturing industries are essential as their real time experiences in handling the system maintenance will be used as an input in developing UI prototype. Three instrumentation engineers from the manufacturing industries involved in this study, as to gather issues and problems in system maintenance by using Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) method. In addition, system maintenance failure archived data were also analysed, to investigate the real time system maintenance problems. In order to help system users to be prepared on any possible obstacles during system maintenance, the input from the real time system maintenance problems were used to map up with the development of UI prototype. From the participatory CTA analysis, three common tasks that need to be considered in the UI prototype were cable, sensor and driver failures. Failure signal alarms were displayed on the UI prototype and solutions to overcome the system failure were also included in the UI prototype design. It is hope that by incorporating the real scenarios of the cognitive tasks in the development of the UI prototype will help users to enhance their tasks, and at the same time to increase the ease of use of the UI system at workplace.