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.
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