L
After arguing with a manufacturer about what imho was a bad HMI design, I wonder if there are any practical design guidelines applied to simple automation HMIs (not DCS, not large SCADA screens)
my questions:
- how do you differentiate a data input field from a pure display field (e.g. box border/not border, different font/background color)
- how do you differentiate states (off/on/warning/alarm)
- when do you use light/dark backgroud, high/low contrast colors
a reasonable (to my eyes) design:
- numeric read-only fields = no border
- numeric read/write fields = boxed with a border
- numeric read-only values not relevant for the operator but useful for troubleshooting = black on gray background
- values or states relevant for the operator (normal data entry) = black on white background
- devices or I/O OFF/ON states = gray and green
- non-blocking abnormal states/values/conditions (machine is still allowed to run) = yellow
- blocking alarms/conditions = red
personally I find also interesting aviation glass-cockpit colors, where roughly:
- background is dark
- magenta are setpoints
- green are feedbacks
- cyan are states/selections
- white are information
- yellow are warnings
- red are alarms
your valuable opinions are welcome ;-)
my questions:
- how do you differentiate a data input field from a pure display field (e.g. box border/not border, different font/background color)
- how do you differentiate states (off/on/warning/alarm)
- when do you use light/dark backgroud, high/low contrast colors
a reasonable (to my eyes) design:
- numeric read-only fields = no border
- numeric read/write fields = boxed with a border
- numeric read-only values not relevant for the operator but useful for troubleshooting = black on gray background
- values or states relevant for the operator (normal data entry) = black on white background
- devices or I/O OFF/ON states = gray and green
- non-blocking abnormal states/values/conditions (machine is still allowed to run) = yellow
- blocking alarms/conditions = red
personally I find also interesting aviation glass-cockpit colors, where roughly:
- background is dark
- magenta are setpoints
- green are feedbacks
- cyan are states/selections
- white are information
- yellow are warnings
- red are alarms
your valuable opinions are welcome ;-)