Motion in Mimic Displays: Effects on the Detection and Diagnosis of Electrical Power System Failures

Abstract

New power system displays have been developed to aid operators in the detection and diagnosis of faults. The enhancement of integrated one-line diagrams of power system data with motion and motion cues was examined in this experiment. Participants acknowledged and solved power system failures on a simulated power network across a number of trials of varying complexity. Participants performed these tasks using interactive displays indicating power flow with digits, stationary arrows, or moving arrows. For high complexity scenarios, results indicated a general advantage for the motion display in the diagnostic task (problem resolution) but a slight advantage of the digital display on the fault detection task (problem identification). Performance with the stationary arrow display was generally between the other two groups, being nearly as good as with the digital display in the detection task and nearly as good as with the moving arrow display in the diagnosis task. Further research is necessary to determine the conditions where motion is most beneficial.