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SCADA & HMI

HMI Screen Design

Operator display hierarchy, alarm visibility, and bilingual layouts.

HMI

Overview

HMI design determines whether an operator perceives plant state in one glance or hunts through screens during an upset — display hierarchy, color discipline, and alarm presentation are operational safety factors.

Engineering purpose

Give operators situation awareness and unambiguous abnormal-state cues, following ISA-101 display hierarchy practice.

How it works

Level-1 overviews show health of everything; level-2 unit screens support operation; level-3/4 detail and diagnostics support intervention. Grey-scale normal operation reserves saturated color for abnormal states.

  • Follow the overview → unit → detail → diagnostic hierarchy (ISA-101) for predictable navigation.
  • Reserve saturated colors for abnormal states; grey normal operation makes alarms stand out.
  • For RTL languages, mirror navigation and reading order but keep trend time axes left-to-right.

Common faults

Rainbow screens where everything competes for attention; alarms visible on screens where they cannot be acknowledged; navigation depth hiding critical detail; RTL layouts with broken trend time axes.

Diagnostic checks

  1. 1Confirm every alarm shown is acknowledgeable from the screen where it appears.
  2. 2Test screens at panel resolution and real viewing distance.
  3. 3Time a cold operator finding the cause of a simulated upset — more than two navigations means the hierarchy is wrong.

Safety notes

Critical alarms and safety status must remain visible from every screen level; a maximized trend window must never hide an active critical alarm banner.

Commissioning notes

Validate screens at panel resolution and arm's-length viewing distance, in both languages, with operators who will actually run the plant.

Related concepts

ISA-101 hierarchy, alarm salience, color discipline, faceplates, bilingual/RTL layout.

hmi · screen · display · operator panel · touch · faceplate · اچ‌ام‌آی · صفحه اپراتوری · نمایشگر · پنل لمسی

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When Hermes Brain uses this article

Cited for operator-display questions: confusing screens, alarm visibility, navigation structure, and bilingual HMI layout.

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