2 FIRST PROTOTYPE THE PURPOSE OF THE FIRST PROTOTYPE WAS TO VISUALIZ...

6.2 First prototype

The purpose of the first prototype was to visualize ideas, to give a concrete form to the

definitions of alarms, which we had decided upon. We wanted to be able to discuss in

what direction the work process was heading for, and explore with the Descartes team if

the basic ideas of the concept was actually technically possibly. The purpose of the

prototype was also to be a tool to visualize the new role of the controller; to deal with

alarms not spending time detecting them.

The first prototype was initial sketches in paper form. The design ideas were based upon

the wish to explore new ways of visualizing large amounts of data, as well as sorting out

information for the user. It was experimented with, at least within this business area,

unconventional methods, with shapes, dynamical sizes of graphical objects and colors.

The first and most inspiring example looks like this:

Figure 6-1 The first prototype

§ The upper bar is a timeline, where each box is one hour, from 8 am to 6 pm. The

vertical black line deriving from the bar indicates the present time, meaning the

time is 10.15 am. Since the work is heavily time critical, it was decided to let the

alarms being sorted in order of when to occur in time. The time bar and the

present time is the consistent frame of the alarm information.

§ The space at the left of the vertical present time line is past time, and the space

on the right side is time to come.

§ The colorful boxes are alarms. The color represents the type of alarm; pink,

yellow, blue and green represents delays, cancellations, defects and massive. The

colors are chosen just to separate the different types, and are not considered from

a design perspective.

§ The shape reveals if it is an alarm; presented as a box, or a Disruption Manager

message from another resource area; presented as a circle. The size of the objects

indicates the impact of the alarms. The horizontal length of the object represents

for how long time the alarm will have an impact on the operation, and the

vertical depth reveals how many crewmembers are affected by the alarm.

§ The striped object to the left is an alarm that has been taken cared of; the

problems triggered by that alarm are solved.

§ The diagonally positioning of the objects indicates when they are to happen in

time.

§ The idea is that when an object is highlighted, by moving the cursor over it, more

detailed information will be shown in a pop-up menu, meaning the type, the

flight number, number of crewmembers, the crew id and so on. All this

information would be clickable links, leading to new pop-up windows with even

more additional information.

§ The tool provided for the interaction is the mouse.

The purpose was to give the user an instant idea of what there is to deal with and when

the alarm will occur. By immediately visualizing the impact and the type of the alarm, it

would reduce the cognitive load for the user to decide in what order to handle the

different alarms. This would basically be an overview, and at the same time provide the

user the opportunity to find the necessary details of the alarms to be able to create

disruptions and solve them.