End User Designing of Complex Task Models for Complex Control-Command Systems

Abstract

In the design of control-command systems, task models are useful for collecting requirements about the use of the systems. Indeed, task models describe actions the supervisor performs to start, to control and to monitor the system events (alerts, performance messages), to evaluate, to stop a function (if needed), etc. Depending on the state of the supervised system (for example, presence of defects), these tasks can be numerous, repetitive and complicated. This complexity makes it difficult to describe task models, which are therefore complex, but essential for design. Task models are usually described by HMI designers using dedicated modeling tools and can be validated with business experts. In this paper, we propose a specification process that enables to best capture system expert knowledge and to facilitate obtaining complex task models based on their operational expert knowledge. Our approach aims at formalizing and designing industrial system tasks models in our tool named Prototask Editor User. With our tool, system experts who are not tasks specialists can read and adapt the tasks pattern while simulating, verifying and validating it.