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ALMA Graphical User Interfaces

1. X A Y Al 4 x f grey a he i8 aipsO heat cool grey Ca b NE FS nt KK bn Figure 13 Visualizing a FITS image in ds9 with a similar interface hard moderate use state of the art multi scale interaction techniques that will make it easier for users to navigate in the image Difficulty is rated as moderate if you use third party Java UI libraries that provide off the shelf visualization components that integrate the above mentioned techniques e g 35 and is rated as hard if you do it from scratch with Java2D Swing S easy low map mouse wheel events to zoom in out in the main viewport in addition to the magnifying glass icons in the bottom left corner 22 3 5 Miscellaneous S easy high It takes time to edit a proposal and the task is a complex one Users do not want to have to do it all over again in case a problem occurs Even though losing data documents is a source of great frustration people tend not to save very often Auto save auto recovery mechanism as found in MS Office like programs Word Excel etc are very useful in this respect There does not seem to be such a feature in the OT It would make sense to add it so that users can restore the proposal to a state close to what it was prior to the occurrence of problems such as application system crash power failure etc Since open save import export features have already been implemented this should be relativ
2. Erweiterte Suche Project Sprachtools TP Single Dish E e Google Suche Auf gut Gluck Suche Y Das Web Seiten auf Deutsch Seiten aus Deutschland Werben mit Google Untemehmensangebote ber Google Google com in English 2010 Datenschutz i div gt Endstatus Start SB Arra ExBlk ExBIk Intent Scans Subscan Integs OL 3 FAIL 02 01 09 34 50 uid X500 X79c X3 001 uid X500 X893 X1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 epietrig oper01 Shell Create Array Web Browsing 10 00 ONES m Mond Operator Monitoring and j Digital Power Supply X Shared Simulator 2010 0214 Figure 44 Web browser plugin for the OMC 54 5 Control room Contact author P Cubaud cubaud cnam fr 5 1 Control room layout Control room organisation can be described as an unthought of for the ALMA program While scanning through the available documentation online we have not been able to find a specific document or a chapter dedicated to this subject Such a description is however necessary when a standard top to bottom design approach is followed in a project The overall physical organisation of the control room dictates the operators workspace s organization which in turn impacts on the screens space and interaction design On the other hand ALMA is clearly an experimental system so it is understandable that many transient organisations for the control will be necessary before reaching a steady
3. On source NO Axes Shutdown Shutter UT 09 47 19 LST 14 02 14 Chai w AZ brake ON EL brake ON Q ABM PM Yes jAzimuth Elevation RA 2000 0 Dec 2000 0 Actual ol10 00 00 00 O010 00 00 00 15 12 27 72 4055 38 S9 77 ommanded eviation AAA AAA _ _ ERE c Vert gom Offset o00 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 Actual 9 0 0 0 commandes A Delta 0 0 0 0 0 0 New Delta Apply Rotation Actual 00 Figure 31 In a similar manner some panels show the current value of a variable as well as the target commanded value Figure 31 It is important to get the exact numerical values but again visually illustrating how far the current value is from the targeted value in other words showing some type of visual progress indicator would be useful for the same reasons as above It is not clear why both the Mount Status panel andthe Mount Control panel exist as the former seems to be a read only subset of the latter Figure 32p S easy to moderate moderate Wouldn t it be possible to have a single panel read only by default which could be unlocked enabling the user to control it provided the user has the permission for that This would decrease the number of plugins in the interface 42 AF XIN B Operator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Session View Debug Corbal Acs Alma O
4. Connection status 0 gue 3142 0143 POC 4 4 pOC45 bOC46 OCA 7 DOCAB OCA 9 09 35 44 YA Warning SCHEDULL SCHEDULING SB uid X500 X79c X3 faiie Line 09 35 44 KW Info CONTROL Received ExecBlockEndedEvent for array co Routine 09 35 44 WD Info OBOPS SC ExecBlockEventHandlerPojo receiving exec ghost 09 35 44 WD Info TELCAL A Removing calibration release Mutex gemocess 09 35 44 Ki Info TELCAL A Removing calibration calibration removed fr comes 09 35 44 ID Info TELCAL A lemptyEventList Thread 09 35 44 e Info TELCAL A Removing calibration release Mutex gog ID 2201 2202 PMO3 2204 Prony Ll cd gt Ml 00K Engine no not filtered d Table not filtered Enact 36 AO AOS xXO06 XX07XX08 xXX09 IA POC 14015 XK 16 OK 17 118 19 Replace Clear Dataflow amp X Copy SB ID Copy ExBIKID Stop this SB EndStatus Start SB Arras ExBlk EXBIK Intent Scan Subscan Integ QL S FAIL 02 01 09 34 50 uid X500 X79c X3 Array001 uid X500 X893 X1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 i Mond j Operator Monitoring a X Shared Simulator 2010 021 4 a El 2 epietrig oper01 Shell Create Array 09 35 D O 7 Figure 23 JLog running as a plugin S easy moderate the toolbar is currently split on two lines Wh
5. arr Source Name ngc4587 Resolve Non Sidereal Motion Solar System Object Ephemeris Proper Motion RA 0 00000 N mas yr i 8 a Q 1x 297 299 22242 0 re 12 38 35 572 02 39 25 47 J2000 Proper Motion Dec 0 00000 mas yr w image filename jsky3 cache jsky7640075710150968980 fits Source Coordinates Sexagesima System 2000 w cm RA 12 38 35 479 auum Dec 02 39 24 516 Resolved by simbad ustrasbg fr Source Velocity 896 0 km s w hel v OPTICAL z optical 0 002989 Parallax 0 00000 mas y Target Type Single Point Field 1 rectangular field Field Center Coordinates Coords Type D ABSOLUTE 8 RELATIVE Offset RA 0 00000 larcsec v Offset Dec 0 00000 arcsec Add Figure 12 Source Visualization The Spatial tab is used to precisely specify the observation target This can be done by entering pa rameters in the Target UI component set and by interacting with a visual depiction of the target and its vicinity retrieving FITS images from a server Comments about tab management and offscreen content navigation facilities expand collapse buttons and scroll bars have been made earlier in this document The following comments apply to the FITS visualization panel This panel Figure 12 is very reminiscent of ds9 s interface Figure 13 This 1s both an advantage and a disadvantage It is an advantage because many astronomers us
6. after having filled in one section It is relatively unclear when you are done with the observation proposal s editing process I am not claiming here that the specification process can be completely linearized but trying to better guide the user w r t where he should start and where he could should go next after each step at a fairly fine grain would have a significant positive impact on the overall user experience Re thinking how information is presented in terms of structure which has a direct impact on how the user navigates in the interface would be another complementary way of addressing this issue The mental AOO Project 0 Alma Observing Tool R7 0Candidate for Chajnantor at 23 02S 67 75W eee Edit Tool Search yaptidns He ET di Appearance Connection Options unnamed project f p E rm Connection Colours Dialogs Telescope Advanced VM Project 0 Telescope Observed Frequer Gi Science Plan Advanced Tab Placeme 0 i 0400 300400 400 00 500 00 El Science Go c n top bottom Font Size 12 5 06 07 08 5 Spectral Setup Control Parameters 53 Calibration Setup Parameters Show for 4 D secs Mouse over Tooltips Science Goal Summary View When looking at a Science Goal show amp a summary table C2 all its page editors Preferred Editors Text Forms When putting the cursor into a form field Preferrably show Forms w editors a i j e select it
7. and navigation in the OMC interface Subsequent sections each deal with a specific interface component or plug in including those that can also run stand alone such as JLog The interface consists of A thin menu status bar at the top that gives concise information about the overall system s status A tabbed pane with one pane for the overall ALMA system and one tab per array created Each of these panes can contain an arbitrary number of internal panels that correspond to the various OMC plugins The layout of these panels can be reconfigured with conventional window management techniques provided by the JIDE docking framework The docking framework lets users manage UI panels through the metaphor of windows arranged into space filling layouts through drag amp drop It is relatively powerful featuring capabilities such as insertion of panels into existing components as new tabs Another advantage is that most users will be familiar with this style of interaction fairly similar to how users manage windows on the desktop However this conventional WIMP based solution does not scale to the large number of plugins and antennas that have to be dealt with in the OMC The docking framework gives users a lot of flexibility but this flexibility has a non negligible cost because of the number of panels and antennas users will spend a lot of time managing windows because only a very limited subset of all information of interest when operatin
8. g oper01 Shell 5j Create Array ator Monitoring ar Digital Power Supply X Shared Simulator Figure 41 Uncategorized views make for a log flat list that is tedious to scan 51 S easy moderate Finally because of the relatively low resolution DPI of current LCD panels italic fonts should be avoided Figure 42 as they are more difficult to read than regular fonts The use of italic fonts is also mentioned in Section 6 4 1 ACS Explorer Panel of 110 The information should be conveyed through another means E Alma ACS Alma po ox OPERATIONAL sequential Subsystems zx ARCHIVE gt EI OPERATIONAL zx SCHEDULING gt OPERATIONAL mOr gt APERA CONTROL AmbSocketServer OPERATIONAL TMCDS MONITOR UNENCVIN lt lt TELCAL b E OPER lt lt CORR b B OPERATIONAL lt lt SCIENCE gt B OPERATIONAL lt OL gt E OPERATIONAL Figure 42 Italic Fonts are legible on paper but perform poorly when displayed on screen S easy moderate Double clicks should not be used for simple selection actions For instance 10 Section 6 7 states that events rows in the Calendar panel have to be double clicked to get details displayed in the right most section This is not consistent with conventional interaction with rows in tables A single click should be sufficient to display detailed information unless retrieving the details is time resource consuming and there are scenarii where one might want to select a
9. the OMC is a tool for power users and keyboard shortcuts will be very beneficial to users S easy moderate Make sure that most often used commands have key bindings e input focus sequence between widgets follows a sensible order Swing FocusManager e navigation in the table can also be performed with key bindings such as arrow keys and page up down for reaching the top bottom of the table S easy low make sure that the ordering of timed events in AlarmPanel and the default ordering of timed events in JLog are consistent Again here the main issue is the lack of synchronization with JLog when running as an OMC plugin S moderate to hard high See comment about this at the end of Section 4 3 S hard high Coupling of alarm entries with the associated components in a redesigned multi scale interface as described in Section 4 I would also be beneficial better helping the user to situate the problem in its context some sort of take me where the problem is and give me the tools to address it feature 31 Antenna DVO2 1 0 Antenna DV02 Mount Array Unassigned RA 14 48 3 DEC 055 38 54 78 Cartridge ALMA_RB_03 PSD Output ON Output ON Temp 9726 84 C Temp 9726 84 C FLOOG Cartridge none Cartridge Fringe Tracking OFF Frequency 31 25 MHz LO2 BBPr0 Fringe Tracking OFF IFProc Pol 0 LLC Frequency 12 035 GHz BBPr 0 1 LSB Time remaining 60 0 min LO2 BBPr1 Fringe Tracking OFF
10. 0 20 9 5 04 e 12 50 TD 0 19 04 amp 018 mu un a ri g 1225 12 00 4 c 8 0 17 fo 11 754 v 2 54 a _3 0 0 4 A v m nm un c ra wu 54 E 11 50 p 016 U ha eee e 015 Sel 11 004 y 0 14 A 10 75 013 010 015 0 2010 O15 0 20 012 21 Frequency GHz Frequency GHz y 10 50 l 0 0 r T r r r r 05 43 09 000 05 43 09 001 05 43 08 999 05 43 09 000 w BUREO1 BB_1 w BUREO2 BB_1 BUREO3 BB_1 4012 34 5 6 7 Time UT 05 44 38 999 05 44 39 000 Time UT BUREO4 BB_1 BUREOS BB_1 BUREO1 BB_2 Azimuth arcseconds BUREO1 BUREO2 BUREO3 BURED4 Time UT BUREO1 e BUREO2 4 BUREO3 BUREO4 BUREO2 BB_2 BUREO3 BB_2 BUREO4 B8_2 Ns BUREO1 e BUREO2 BUREO3 BUREO4 BUREOS BUREOS BB BUREOS BUREO6 uw ce Relative Phase degre s Altitude arcseconds P ARRAYOO1 22 O X i ES ARRAYOO1 2 EX E ARRAYOO1 22 3 El LE DX Aperture Efficiency vs Time Phase Curve vs Time uncorrected Tau vs Time Bandpass Amplitude Curve corrected Pointing Offsets uncorrected 1275 Sy 4l 4 5 5 04 i 7 51 5 07 2 54 12 50 A 4 0 gt v 1225 Bs 5 12 00 3 3 0 5 11 75 925 i M in 4 a 0 0 4 M in 2 54 11 50 amp 2 0 Relative Amplitude a E S ce 5 04 m in So o 5 7 54 11 00 H H H H H 014 0 10 O15 02010 0 15 0 20 10 0 4 10 75 Frequency GHz
11. 45 35 QuickLookrunningasan OMC plugin 46 36 Problems of scalability in terms of number and complexity of the data plots to monitor 47 37 Problems of scalability in terms of number of antennas and baselines Conventional charts and plots work well with a few antennas baselines but will not scale 48 38 __ Part of the OMC status bal 50 39 Highly saturated colors are tiring for the human eyel 50 40 Blinking heart in the OMC interface left and at the VLT right 51 41 Uncategorized views make for a log flat list that is tedious to scan 51 42 Italic Fonts are legible on paper but perform poorly when displayed on screen 52 43 Excessive nesting of components makes it difficult for users to orient themselves in the Mead coo ranas aaa eee eee E PAS S 53 44 Web browser plugin for the OMC 54 1 Executive Summary This document provides feedback about the current status of ALMA GUIs and suggestions for improve ments It covers the Observation Tool and various Executive Subsystem components including the Opera tor Monitoring and Control framework JLog and the Alarm Panel Control Device GUIs and QuickLook Observation Tool The target audience of this application is the community of radio astronomers who will use it to prepare their observation
12. Factors in Computing Systems pages 234 241 ACM Press Addison Wesley 1995 doi acm org 10 1145 223904 223934 P Grosbgl S Scott and M Schilling Executive Subsystem Operator User Manual November 2009 COMP 70 30 00 00 006 F MAN T Grossman and R Balakrishnan The bubble cursor enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor s activation area In CHI 05 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in com puting systems pages 281 290 New York NY USA 2005 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 LODSSS TZ LUUL J Grudin Partitioning digital worlds focal and peripheral awareness in multiple monitor use In CHI 0I Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 458 465 New York NY USA 2001 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 365024 365312 H Hochheiser and B Shneiderman Dynamic query tools for time series data sets timebox widgets for interactive exploration Information Visualization 3 1 1 18 2004 http doi acm org 10 1145 dod d iT C Holz and S Feiner Relaxed selection techniques for querying time series graphs In UTST 09 Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology pages 213 222 New York NY USA 2009 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 1622176 1622217 Y Honglin User Guide to the Quicklook Calibration Monitor December 2009 ALMA 7 0 0 ACS 8 0 1 K Hornbek B B Bederson and C Plaisant Nav
13. Frequency GHz Y 10 50 a 0 0 004 MI 05 43 09 000 05 43 09 001 05 43 05 44 05 45 05 46 01 39 06 000 01 39 06 001 BUREO1 BB BUREO2 BB_1 BUREO3 BB_1 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Time UT Time UT Time UT BUREDA BB 1 BUREDS BB 1 BUREO1 BB 2 Azimuth arcseconds P ARRAYOO1 22 DS EX P ARRAYOO1 22 3 ES IE OS 2 ARRAYOO1 22 30 SEX E ARRAYOO1 2 ies B DS ARRAYOO1 22 3 O X Delay vs Time uncorrected Amplitude Curve vs Time uncorrected System Temperature degree vs Time Phase RMS vs Baseline uncorrected Focus Offsets vs Time uncorrected 3 050 125 1 dm 3 075 4 3 100 4 3 125 4 3 150 4 3 175 4 3 200 4 3 225 5 3 250 4 0 0 301 0 r 05 43 08 999 05 43 09 000 05 43 05 44 05 45 05 46 01 39 06 000 01 39 06 001 ufi Time UT Time UT Time UT S0 100 150 200 250 16 56 31 999 16 56 32 000 m BUREO1 e BUREO2 BUREO3 BUREO4 BUREO1 w BUREO2 BUREO3 s BUREO4 BUREO 1 e BUREO2 amp BUREO3 BUREO4 Baseline Length m Time UT BUREOS BUREOS BUREOS m 05 43 09 e 05 43 09 m BUREO2 e BUREO4 BUREOS 00 f O ma project Acs EEJ SquirrelMail 1 System Monito 3 Java QIExecP Awe 0 OM da Object Explore iCalendar amp Konsole 11 X Log Messages Alma pipelir hd Altitude arcseconds 124 004 a o 4 4 Temperature degree Phase RMS degrees Relative Amplitude degrees g
14. Frequency 12 035 GHz SAS LO2 BBPr2 Photonic Ref Fringe Tracking OFF Frequency 12 035 GHz BBPr 0 1 B TT Ta 20011 XX 12 XX 13 XX14 XX 15 XX 16 XX 17 0418 XX 19 oko E LO2 BBPr3 i 5 D is in state ANTENNA NOT INSTALLED Fringe Tracking OFF XX21 XX22 XX23 X24 bodas poc27 X28 X29 peo Frequency 12 035 GHz XX31 XX32 XX33 XX34 XX35 XX36 XX37 XX38 XX39 XX40 XX41XX42Xx43 XX44 XX45 XX46 XX47 XX48 XX49 OAKS 0 ff ben e n wer es ver vor o o iol Antennas BS see a Unassigned Degraded DEEE 1 Unassigned Degraded NoError ANTENNA ONLINE El epietrig oper01 Shell 4 Antenna Status Antenna DVO2 1 0 cn SES Monda Operator Monitoring and C Antenna DVO2 0 X Shared Simulator 201002 4 Figure 26 Block diagram of the major devices in an antenna 4 5 Control Devices A block diagram is used to show the most important devices in an antenna with a summary of their status and an explicit representation of their relationships Figure 26 This is very appropriate Similar diagrams are used e g at the VLT for several subsystems Figure 27 S moderate high schematic representations of devices could be used in several device components Again such visual representations leverage human spatial memory reduce visual search time provide richer depictions of systems thanks to the multidimensional arrangement of information that also enables the explicit depiction of relationship
15. Log Contextual Help Validate your observing program by Validate e Selecting File gt Validate Observing e Click on the M icon in the toolbar pl ea e Or click on this link z 5 A Look at the Feedback panel and view the Click on the overview steps to view the contextual help list of reported problems Please fix the reported problems before attempting to submit your observing program Spectral Spatial Description Suggestion Problems Information Lo Contextual Help Validate your observing program by Validate e Selecting File Validate Observing e Click on the icon in the toolbar PAU e Or click on this link Look at the Feedback panel and view the list of reported problems Please fix the reported problems before attempting to submit your observing program Click on the overview steps to view the contextual help Figure 2 Reflect Phase in color scheme green should be desaturated blue is ok as is group S easy major reorganize the tabs based on their relationship to the JTree Actually this is a related to the high level suggestion above Note that this particular issue of consistency can be solved locally even if you do not re consider the overall UI organization S easy moderate the generic tab name Forms should be changed to something more informative maybe context sensitive 1 e depending on what is selected in the JTree A somewhat related issue e
16. The Opt ions menu could be removed replaced by a single menu item called Preferences rather than Options in either the Edit menu or File menu That menu item would trigger the Opt ions window either always on the first tab easier or the last selected tab better but not essential The Overview pane contains useful information about the different high level steps one should take Some more context dependent help is directly integrated in the Forms tab The Feedback pane provides incremental feedback about the validity of the proposal and can take the user to the location in the interface where he can address issues I haven t had the opportunity to investigate this feature deep enough to say whether it does a good job or a perfect job but this 1s clearly a very important feature that deserves to be as rich as possible One minor comment it is not obvious that clicking on a line in the Feedback section sometimes takes you to highlights the source of the problem S easy moderate add an icon such as an arrow that would symbolize the action of going to the source of the error both the line and the icon should be clickable The primary navigation facility is the JTree on the left hand side with tabs in the other panes to navigate between different sections of the document There are several issues associated with this navigation model It is not linear meaning that newbies are lost There is no obvious place where to start and where to go next
17. a simulation of what I suggest probably better to look at it on line rather than printed Spectral Spatial Visualisation Observed Frequency 999 1099q PF rocoso 0109 00909 a a 02 03 04 05 06 08 0100 100 00 150 00 200 00 250 Freauencw in Taraet Frame Receiver Bands Transmission Other Transitions Select Other Transitions Z Spectral Spatial Visualisation Observed Frequency 909 10000 1p0000 200000 2 RE 7057000 0009 1 02 03 04 05 06 08 13 C 34 5 v 0 2 7 6 Freauencv in Taraet Frame Receiver Bands Transmission Other Transitions Select Other Transitions F Figure 8 Visualization of Spectral Lines a current version b dimming the absorption transmission plot so that other components of the plot such as spectral lines better stand out This might not be very convincing when printed on paper Please refer to an on line version 17 0 600 00 P0040 sooo y 300400 100d arget Frame her Transitions Figure 9 Visualization of Spectral Lines transitions displayed with a light green color on a gray back ground are difficult to read Some of the other colors used in the plot are not legible Some spectral lines are displayed in light green and are almost illegible on the light gray background see Figure 9 Some lines are blue and stand out much better though it is generally advised not to use tones of blue for thin objects in GUIs S easy moderate pay carefu
18. is used often during operations Obviously addressing the more general issue discussed in Section 4 I would make it possible to dedicate more screen real estate to the Scheduler plug in Execute Stop and Abort buttons seem to get automatically enabled disabled depending on the con text e g whether an SB is selected in the SBs Found table or not S easy moderate make sure that those buttons are enabled disabled in a consistent manner Otherwise users might think that the system or the UI has become unresponsive Buttons for managing SBs in Queued scheduling mode the labels do not properly convey the semantics of the actions detailed in 20 For instance StopSB and Abort SB not only stop the current SB but start executing the next one This is what makes the difference between SB buttons and Queue buttons But this is not explicit S easy low Obviously the button labels cannot be made too long Possible 44 alternative resort to icons that could convey the semantics in a more visually compact manner it is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words though this is not always true this is a typical case where it could apply In any case make sure explanatory tooltips are available for each button Status of a scheduling block s execution the status of an SB is represented by a letter R C AB S AR F incolumn S S easy low relating these letters to actual status is cognitively demanding Again icons
19. might be more self explanatory And in any case make sure tooltips are available for each status Log Scheduler Interactive Array Full Automatic Mode Array Status Active Destroy Array Projects SEs PI Name SE Mode Name Project Name SE Mode Type Projects Found SEs Found Figure 34 Incorrect use of checkboxes for mutually exclusive choices Results by project or by SB Figure 34 the two modes are available and mutually exclusive Checkboxes are used for choosing multiple options in a set when those options are mutually exclusive radio buttons should be used 33 S easy moderate Simply replace the two checkboxes by two radio buttons Searching the archive right now search is a very sequential process users enter query parameters in different fields click search and get the results As mentioned earlier e g for JLog S moderate mod erate a more interactive search paradigm such as dynamic queries 32 or even basic suggestions as is now commonly found in Web query interfaces would make the search more efficient It is my under standing that the archive will be very large In this context dynamic queries would clearly improve search efficiency but might also be challenging to implement 45 4 7 Quick Look perator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Phase RMS vs Baseline Destroy Array T e 4 a e 4 gt o L Phase RMS degrees w o 4 2 50
20. mouse wheel should be supported for zoom in out and panning should be performed with the left mouse button According to 15 left mouse button clicks anywhere in the plot toggle between the display of cor rected and uncorrected data This hidden not explicitly represented action 1s potentially dangerous In addition using the color of the chart s title to indicate the current display corrected vs uncor rected 1s not advised It would be better to have a small button labeled with the current status that toggles between both displays when clicked Tool tips to display information about data points 15 tool tips are usually used as a means to convey helpful information to the user They thus appear after some delay once the cursor has stopped moving This behavior is appropriate in the context of help but not when the goal is to convey information to the user The delay decreases efficiency and increases frustration Make sure the tooltip appears immediately This will however not solve the problem of persistence tooltips disappear as the mouse cursor is moved making it difficult for users to compare values for different data points Selection of data points if users are expected to select data points often a pointing facilitation technique making it easier to select small targets could be used in the chart area such as the Bubble Cursor or DynaSpot 5 Another option would be to use excentric labels 8 Partial because they do n
21. particular row without seeing the details Some panels feature a high level of component nesting e g Figure 43 making it more difficult for users to orient themselves in the UI as tabs containing many border panels are nested within other tabs that are themselves presented in panels that can be collapsed that are themselves part of a panel within the 22 odule DYO1 3 El X DRX EEpr3 DYOL TRX Alarm O System Clock O Parity Error O Metaframe O TE Alarm O Data Clock O Sync Pattern O Delay C 0 Details Hide Details Frame Aligned O O C Count less than this O O C Count greater than this O o Syne Status Sync Resets Fifo Pointer Initialization Ch D Sync Found O Ch D Offset O Ch C Sync Found Enable Controls Q Figure 43 Excessive nesting of components makes it difficult for users to orient themselves in the interface docking framework Avoid nesting of tabbed panes S moderate moderate either by using other Swing widgets to organize the interface S easy high or naturally as part of the switch to a multi scale interface as suggested in Section 4 1 but the latter is S difficult high Several pop up menus feature a Cancel item that seems to be used only to discard the menu S easy low Usually pop up menus are discarded simply by clicking outside the menu The semantics of this Cancel item are thus ambiguous Removing it will also shorten the list of items and hence the menu s compl
22. state as was the case for the VLT For instance the number of people operators astronomers that are supposed to work together in the control room seems to vary In 29 a number of four people having each a dedicated station is suggested for the commissioning Four roles such as master operator MO assistant operator AO staff astronomer SA and monitoring agent MA are also mentioned p 12 On the other hand Software architecture suggests that only one console is necessary for normal operation The role of the control stations at the AOS should also be clarified for our analysis We shall assume here that four people are supposed to work together The only document adressing the issue of physical layout for the control operations seems to be 29 figure 6 that we reproduce below in full Was this setup supposed to be at OSF or in front of the antenna array at the AOS the open window suggests the latter TITI II RU TEH AAA T Figure 6 Cartoon of the layout of the operator console configuration The central monitor displays the array overview and provides a command line interface The monitor on the left provides detailed status displays The monitor on the right is open for the operator to start up e g an Observing Tool Netscape an Archive query interface the QuickLook display or an offline reduction session During our visit to the OSF in dec 2009 the control room was organised as follow Three consol
23. sufficient Addressing this issue would require more time with both designers and end users of the OT As a summary two approaches to solving this issue are 1 try to linearize the obs proposal s editing process by re considering the JTree tabbed panes GUI structure allowing users to go back to the previous steps thus enforcing one particular path to the obs proposal s specification 2 keep the current structure but make the contextual help even more contextual suggesting next steps at a finer grain than what is currently done The earlier mentioned pre filled observation templates would be good additions to any of these two solutions Other comments related to the general organization of the GUI follow The current grouping of components in the Spectral Spatial Forms Catalog tabs is the source of several problems beyond the one mentioned above First there 1s a problem of consistency in the interface the content of the Forms tab changes radically depending on what item is selected in the JTree whereas the content of other tabs Spectral Spatial does not This inconsistency is misleading if the Forms tab s content varies depending on the currently selected JTree item then one expects that the content of all other tabs will also depend on the currently selected JTree item because they all belong to the same tab 10 Spectral Spatial Forms Catalog 2 7 Description Suggestion Problems Information
24. that the geographical location of antennas is not an irrelevant piece of information Antennas form the nodes of a network whose edges are the baselines This network is an important abstraction of the system and representing it through an interactive visualization component would both make navigation in the system more efficient and further help users build a strong mental map of the system simply because it explicitly represents information that is currently only conveyed through text making mental tasks such as comparisons more cognitively demanding S hard major All these issues represent a major UI challenge that cannot be addressed by incremental enhancements The current layout is too abstract and volatile It requires re considering the overall orga nization of the UI in favor of more advanced information presentation and navigation paradigms such as e g multi scale user interfaces 11 9 and multiple coordinated views 22 that will enable a more efficient use of available screen real estate and will let users navigate more efficiently in the information space including support for custom groupings of components in compound objects as described in 30 Re considering the overall organization of the UI does not require completely reimplementing the OMC Many of the plugin panels can be kept almost as 1s plus the implementation of suggestions made in the following sections most panels can run as plugins or as standalone app
25. 0 5 000 7 500 10 000 12 500 15 000 17 500 20 000 22 500 SB Details Baseline Length m IVIdA CACLULIUII LUUIIL PUP perm Priority m 10 19 32 e 10 19 32 Status Ready PhaseRMS Number of ExecStatus 2 ExecStatus 0 FullyObserved aa 23 ES en EA Total SBs failed 0 ExecStatus 1 Broken Replace Clear E 7 17 Dataflow Copy SB ID Copy ExBIk ID Stop this SB Endstatus Stan SB Arra ExBIk ExBlk Intent Scan Subscan Integ OL 29 FAIL 02 01 10 11 17 uid X500 X809 X3 Array002 uid X 1 1 CALIBRATE_ATMOS 14 3 1 0 0 Figure 35 QuickLook running as an OMC plugin QuickLook can be run as a plug in or standalone Calibration results consist of many charts that use different types of plots depending on the nature of the information visualized e g aperture efficiency vs time pointing offsets phase rms vs baseline length According to 15 all these charts 13 different types total can be presented either in Gather mode Figure 37 left or Scatter mode Figure 36 The former uses less screen real estate the latter allows for the simultaneous visualization of several plots Gather mode is compact and does not require the user to manage many windows However it does not allow monitoring several plots at the same time The user has to click on a tab to see the plot associated with this data which replaces the previously selected one Scatter mode assigns one
26. 09741 GHz Number of Positions Dwell Time NORMAL Products Sideband Separation CROSS AND AUTO FREQUENCY OFFSET REJECTION Spectral Windows CRETE 661 067 GHz v 62 5 MHz 4096 15 259 KHz X Offset MHz 2999 999 s the very dense layout impedes legibility 16 3 3 Spectral Tab Interviews conducted with astronomers at the OSF revealed that this is a very important part of the inter face Astronomers see it as an essential tool to do some exploration for instance to identify what spectral lines they could observe in addition to the main one s knowing that there are constraints on what you can observe receivers etc Most comments are related to the Visualisation component of that tab Figure 8 a Generally speaking this part of the interface has been enhanced since we first saw it in July 2009 Navi gation e g pan amp zoom seems to be smoother There are still some issues though One issue that is easy to address is the color scheme used in the plot S easy moderate following Tufte s principles 34 the absorption plot should be rendered with a low contrasted shade of gray instead of the current highly saturated purple hue The absorption plot is an important piece of information but it does not play an essential role in the interactive specification process It is more like reference data that should always be visible like a grid in a CAD program See Figure 8 b for
27. 1 12 13 14 15 16 17 B B Bederson J Grosjean and J Meyer Toolkit design for interactive structured graphics EEE Trans Softw Eng 30 8 535 546 2004 B B Bederson B Shneiderman and M Wattenberg Ordered and quantum treemaps Making effective use of 2d space to display hierarchies ACM Trans Graph 21 4 833 854 2002 J Bertin Semiology of Graphics University of Wisconsin Press 1983 ISBN 0 299 09060 4 A Caproni ACS Alarm System November 2007 ALMA O Chapuis J B Labrune and E Pietriga Dynaspot speed dependent area cursor In CHI 09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 1391 1400 New York NY USA 2009 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 1518701 1518911 A Cockburn A Karlson and B B Bederson A review of overview detail zooming and focus context interfaces ACM Computing Surveys 41 1 1 31 2008 http doi acm org 10 1145 1456650 1456652 Definition WIMP computing http en wikipedia org wiki WIMP_ computing J D Fekete and C Plaisant Excentric labeling dynamic neighborhood labeling for data visualization In CHI 799 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 512 519 New York NY USA 1999 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 302979 303148 G W Furnas and B B Bederson Space scale diagrams understanding multiscale interfaces In CHI 95 Proc Human
28. 74 6 9990 0 0000 0 0000 0 0000 0 0000 ampere ampere ampere 6 9990 volt volt volt 6 9990 volt Enable Controls Q Figure 29 Panel that would typically benefit from the user of a more visual representation of variables AUXILIARY TELESCOPE HOUSE KEEPING wat2tcs I Oil Pressure bar 011 ready 54 9 Return Flow l min We not locked Alarm Ack Reference Temp i 7 4 8 Oil Temperature C TELESCOPE TRANSPORTER REMOTE OK Transporter Relocation On Station Liquid Cooling Air Conditioning p Air Conditioning Active LCM Chiller fu su amo 0 STOP AUTO 30 Cooling Pump Active 20 i i 0 EE ERM 17 7 916 4 FM LC 20 CH E CWPS 6 Cabinet pr cp Command Feedback Window Options Telescope Temperatures 7 0 18 1 o TELESCOPE STATE EEA STANDBY IDLE DAYTIME E 9 Station HO South Enclosure North i gt 2 SETMIREFT N 67 if 17 5 418 3 Sun Altitude 15 0 deg u o m s TA MI sp 73 TEASED OPEN CLOSE CLOSE oven as Seals Clamps I Tartaced clasped 16 7 E r mm ais ad coPRESS Transporter Status Engaged Motion Stop Engaged vn o E FA 0001 FB 1A 18 Tank Pressure ON Low Level 5 Li O Temp Ok ag O Filter Ok 5 E Figure 30 Use of bar gauges to show values that are supposed to vary in specific ranges Paranal VLT Some panels would
29. ALMA Graphical User Interfaces March 22 2010 Authors e Pierre Cubaud CNAM Conservatoire National des Arts et M tiers cubaud cnam fr Emmanuel Pietriga INRIA Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique emmanuel pietriga inria fr e Alexandre Topol CNAM Conservatoire National des Arts et M tiers topol cnam fr Contents 1 Executive Summary 2 Methodology 3 Observing Tool 5d General Comments X uoo ok ROB 898 3 x 9 bbe A 4 5 E de x4 oe xo dE a TT So Spel lab te eaten eta Re Eee ESE Bee es os 94 95 h 3 4 Spatial Tab se e s se soad e Dh be Rhee eee eee ES is dessu 35 Mascel neouds e sses atar de du no 4 1 Overall Organization of the UI C LD I 4 9 MEOS succ EN eee hee AA S BER A ROS E RP mE NM S uU A UNIS RU S RUN RAE 44 Alarm Panels lt ux ke EEDA POP SE US oe A EDs 25 COntrOLDOVIEeSE 5e 5 99209 x P RR dus 9 X 9 No S E PUE S Rus Sw deos eee 4 6 Scheduler Project SB Search Dataflow ET QUICK LOOK 233 64 3 4 3 3 432359 5453 hee 33 ee Lo 4 8 Miscellaneous 5 Control Room Layout 15 17 21 23 List of Figures Direct access to Preferences tabs in the Options window 10 2 Reflect Phase in color scheme green should be desaturated blue is okasis 11 3 Addressing the problem of limited screen real estate
30. S CAL FOCUS CALFOCUSE CAL POINTING W 05 43 09 903 43 09 CAL_POINTINGE CAL_CURVE_AMPLITUDE SEEING CAL CURVE PHASE CAL_PHASE PhaseRMS Figure 37 Problems of scalability in terms of number of antennas and baselines Conventional charts and plots work well with a few antennas baselines but will not scale S difficult major There is no quick and easy solution to this problem Addressing the scalability issue requires more UI design work working closely with end users operators and astronomers to understand how these plots will be used what information is critical how often do users look at them what actions are they likely to take in response to problems identified in the plots what is the time frame delay before these actions get reflected in the plots if at all do users need to establish correlations between events in different plots etc Ideas that have crossed my mind include For a given plot only present a subset of all antennas baselines at a time say maximum 10 of them and automatically rotate between subsets every N seconds The user must however be able to take control of this rotation e g through a temporal slider that would allow her to jump to a given subset quickly As the temporal slider operating on a continuous scale approaches the range dedicated to another subset gradually fade in plots from the next subset and gradually fade out plots from the current one This can easil
31. also greatly benefit from more visual representations of values For instance the Power Supply Analog panel features several values that are supposed to remain within a defined range Figure 29 S moderate high Instead of using text only values use gauges to display the current value see examples from VLT in Figure 30 as well as the allowed range on an appropriate scale The textual representation of values should still be displayed as the visual representation 1s not precise enough its purpose is to provide an efficient mean of assessing the current value and situating it within the range based on pre attentive variables It also makes identifying outliers or comparing similar variables much 41 easier cognitively much less demanding as comparing the height of two bars is much easier than reading and comparing two textual values Beyond the case of the Power Supply Analog panel shown in Figure 29 it is stated in 28 Section 3 3 2 Detail Area that Valid ranges are available by moving the mouse over the value This will draw a pop up display showing lower and upper ranges The same comment about more visual gauge based representations applies But in this case the problem is worse as the valid range is shown only in a pop up this implies no persistency difficult to make comparisons as for tool tips see comments about the inappropriateness of tooltips to convey information other than contextual help in Section 4 7
32. ancelling From what we were told users would like to use the same science goal to generate multiple top level SBs concrete observations being refined manually within these top level SBs Based on the behavior described here this does not seem possible The Target item in the JTree shows a summary of all items in the Resources subtree Having such a view of all data in a single place is a nice feature There is however a problem of layout All the resources are packed very close together making for a very very dense set of widgets Figure S easy moderate put some empty space between the three different elements Give the user some space to breathe visually speaking With the current layout the user cannot easily differentiate the different logical groups of the UI 15 his FieldSource is used by 1 target Field Source E Primary Field Source Name Source Name Non Sidereal Motion Ephemeris Proper Motion RA 0 00000 mas y Proper Motion Dec 0 00000 mas y Sexagesimal system deta HI RA 12 38 35 479 Dec 02 39 24 516 Source Radial Velocity 896 0 z optical 0 002989 Source Coordinates Parallax Source Properties Diameter Visible Magnitude Use Reference EE R O j This SpectralSpec is used by 1 target Spectral Spec Spectral Spec Name Setup for null 661 06728 Transition __ arma RB_09 Receiver Type DSB 0 0 0 JjsubScanDuraton s0 72000 s y C T
33. ar to the tab management interface of many tab based interfaces such as Web browsers see Figure 5 for an example This is to minimize the number of steps required to perform the action A similar comment can be made about the table in the Create Array Existing array panel destroying arrays performed by popping up a contextual menu for each row 33 4 3 JLog This tool provides a unified interface to monitor logs coming from many sources The application is able to handle large numbers of log entries thanks to an advanced multi level caching system 27 NX epietrig gns 1006 OMC Operator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Session View Debug Corba Acs Alma OpSemer UT 09 35 47 LST 13 50 41 Alma Array001 gt E Mount Control Dartboard Flog El Scheduler A X 1 amp X File View Search Drill down Expert Log eve d Info Discard leve Debug w i Pause _ Clear logs Filter PAPER AE TimeSta v Entry Type source Obj Log Message Detailed info Mies Res Pea ces MK Keg GRAB RES 09 35 44 D Info CONTROL Going to SENDING STATE 09 35 44 WD Info CONTROL Data acquisition activated ___LogField 09 35 44 3 Info CONTROL Going to SENDING STATE TimeStamp XX32 POCS 3 X3 40035 PX 6003 70063 8DOCG39 09 35 44 Ki Info CONTROL Data acquisition activated gentry Type 09 35 44 Info CONTROL IFProc allocated Source Object 09 35 44 LD Info CONTROL
34. arch plugin will hopefully be replaced by an archive plug in search tool and currently exists purely for convenience The following comments are thus focused on the Scheduler plugin though many of them apply to the former due to their similarity in terms of UI design Search Archive Interactive Array Projede ses J Array Type gt Full Automatic Mode Array Status Active Destroy Array PI Name SB Mode Name All Projects SBs J Array Type v Project Name SB Mode Type A M PI Name SB Mode Name Project Type Search Project Name b SB Mode Type Projects Found SBs Found Project Name PI Name Yersion SB Name Project Project Type All Search Clear ro TP Single Dish Thomas Powers 2009 4 Holography IHG 3 rows indef RC Unbiased survey of su S Guilloteau 1 Projects Found SBs Found a Sa Version 2009 HG 3 rows indef RC PSLHG 3 Ke s i JO DBB SFI Thomas Powers Astro HG 18 180 rows TPO PSI ESO Unbiased survey of su PKR 11 HG 3 rows indef RC PSI HG 3 r 0 Unbiased survey of su S Guilloteau DBB SFI Thomas P i owe A ee Astro HG 18 180 rows TPO PSI ESO 2009 qt gt Unbiased survey of sub PKR 1 0 TER Project Info SB Details 4 gt Stop OT Project s status not complete E Ts PI Name PSI HG 3 rows indef RC Project Name TP Single Dish Ma
35. ble 1 offer two independant views a global one and a detailled view for the center 2 use of a non linear mapping We investigate here the later It seems difficult to use a standard logarithmic scale for both axes A good solution is to translate rect coordinates to polar keep angle unchanged and scale distance d non linearly above some threshold D In the figures below the mapping for distance d is f d D d D 0 33 for d gt D and f d d otherwise Object size in pixels also varies the bigger the better A good compromise for readability seems D 125 allowing an object size of 10 pix for a general picture being 600 pix large A SL Pre Ex 1 Ng R pi 1 gt 7a et qe e s H e Ez gt c e 177 10 o n 11 e o B B a e B gt e c r gt LE a sta o u e e a o o gt efe B ole n ii free a e p 3 e AS a gt 5 e e e Se e e 99 5 e ss eU a E gt ee 7 6 gt x Li e e m EI e e o e o a gt The status of the antennas can be rendered with all the techniques explored in the previous paragraph For instance using colors or grey values gives 9 A Q e hh 2 E uw ce 9 4 ze e ati he S 98 H gt r 4 v Qu If we want to use a schematic antenna the contract
36. but we have been told during interviews at Santiago that such a schematic was under study Having this information at hand would very usefull for further HCI investigations Meanwhile fig 4 of Software architecture p 15 can provide guidelines although it doesn t describe the information flow between the parts Clearly the challenge for graphical design here is due to the number of repeated items 64 antennas thousends of baselines etc We explore below 3 possible designs 5 2 1 Synthetic approach chessboard based We focus here on the individual antenna status but are well aware that many other informations have to be reported calibration phase execution of scheduling blocks etc Antenna status depends upon 5 subsytems tracking receivers cryogenics local oscillators and backend 29 fig 1 proposes a matrix 10x7 organization The matrix can be resized at user will Below are the chessboard from 29 and a screen shot taken at the OSF X Xx03 XX04 x05 poxoe x07 pocos pocos XX10 S UH AX11 XA 12 MEN bois xa odas xx1s Loko 020 is in state ANTENNA_NOT_INE X24 xx25 XX21 paa pos XX27 28190029 10G3 laa EZ XX32 XX33 XX34 XX35 OS 6 KKF KSE XX39 XX40 EIFEL 7 D n n ss Detailed receiver info XX41 XX42 XX43 Kaaa C45 Dore 0447 pocas ports ASO YTOS YYO4 ros woe YrO 7 ros vos YY10 gt GEE EE EE Se YY11 vna fwaz zzo1 220 z202 2204 problem and mo
37. cern to the user while she is creating her filters Regular expressions S easy moderate regular expressions are fairly easy to learn but most people are not familiar with the syntax and sometimes confound it with POSIX file system wildcard syntax Provide the basic but meaningful examples found in 27 directly in the interface through a small contextual help widget allowing users to copy paste edit them Select field for new filter Select field for new filter Select field for new filter Entry Type v TimeStamp j v j Log Message y From Discard entries matching this filte Day Month y Minimum value 127 w March vj 2007 v amp Y Debug v Discard entries matching this filter Hours Minutes Seconds Exact value gt j 150 100 v Maximum value ae a A ES v Regular expression pattern t Container Exact value Day Month _ Year 27 w March v 2007 v e Trace Hours Minutes Seconds 9 148 18 OK Cancel lt Cancel Figure 24 Wrong use of a checkbox for mutually exclusive choice 35 Filter properties According to Section 3 5 a checkbox Discard entries matching this filter is used to indicate whether the filter should be interpreted as a boolean True or False in the overall AND expression Figure 24 The use of a single checkbox widget makes its semantics ambiguous This is a simple case of mutually exclusive choice and nothing is optional ab
38. chitecture it also means that plugins cannot communicate with one another consequently the corresponding UI components cannot easily be synchronized though this would often make sense see e g Sections 4 1 4 3 4 4 For critical and complex systems such as ALMA careful UI design is very important and given the complexity of the GUIs this work should be conducted by people who are knowledgeable in terms of UI design and who are well aware of the state of the art in terms of human computer interaction and information visualization Designing UIs for complex systems actually requires expertise that software engineers often do not have simply because they have not been trained for this To be blunt being able to programmatically instantiate UI components and assemble them in complex layouts is not sufficient to create efficient GUIs as being able to instantiate multiple threads is not sufficient to create an efficient and deadlock free multi threaded architecture Scalability to 60 antennas and more than two thousand baselines will be difficult to achieve with the current interface design A multi scale interface embedding enhanced versions of existing plugins along with multiple coordinated views would represent a major step forward and would be much more scalable Designing and implementing such a solution requires significant work participatory design workshops with operators and astronomers design of appropriate visualizations and asso
39. ciated interactions select ing learning and using multi scale structured graphics and information visualization toolkits for their implementation integration of plugins including support for communication between some of them 2 Methodology We conducted interviews with ALMA personnel including operators astronomers and software develop ers in December 2009 both in the Santiago offices at the OSF and at the VLT in Paranal We later explored the Observing Tool s interface by installing it locally on our own computers Emmanuel Pietriga was granted access to an STE instance to explore the OMC s UI through a remote connection for half a day in February The following documents served as reference material for our report 41 10 15 20 27 28 29 as well as screenshots from various systems both for ALMA and the VLT The following people were interviewed Emilio Barrios OSF Stuart Corder Santiago Angela Cortes Paranal VLT Bill Dent OSF Philippe Duhoux Paranal VLT Alessandro Caproni Santiago and OSF Preben Grosbgl OSF Antonio S Hales OSF Valentino Ivanov Paranal VLT Alison Peck Santiago Mark Rawlings OSF Kartik Sheth OSF Debra Shepherd OSF Baltazar Vila Vilaro Santiago and OSF Nick Whyborn OSF VLI I operators Paranal VLT ALMA GUIs were also discussed extensively with Joseph Schwarz throughout this period 3 Observing Tool Contact Author emmanuel pietriga
40. e Field Center Coordinates Coords Type O ABSOLUTE amp RELATIVE Offset RA 5 05172 arcsec v Offset Dec 11 52521 arcsec v Figure 3 Addressing the problem of limited screen real estate more content than what is displayed at first in this pane In other words users don t always see they have to scroll down that there are more fields below simply because the nesting and quantity of UI compo nents scrollbars etc hides it Another issue is that of mixing two different techniques for addressing the problem of limited screen real estate panes that don t fully fit on screen one consists in adding scroll bars the other in making it possible for the user to contract expand sections of a pane with small boxes Figure 3 These two techniques aren t really compatible and one should not mix them S easy moderate stick to one possibly enhancing it to make navigation from section to section easier Re move the collapse expand feature This means that everything has to be expanded If this generates very long scrollable panels you could add a menu whose items are the different sections of the pane like Fov parameters Image Query Target in Figure 3 Clicking on one of these items would scroll the viewport automatically to that section This would be similar to anchor based navigation in Web pages intra links in a given page On the location of some widgets some buttons are located too far from what they act
41. e 14 b T Fi b Get Mail New Message Reply Reply All Forward Delete Junk Figure 14 Group items in the toolbar according to their semantics as in b S easy low why is the Abstract fieldin Proposal information only editable through a popup window Figure 15 All other fields can be edited directly text can be copy pasted in them except for this one The user has to pop up a window type her text and then click ok This is cumbersome If this was done to enforce the 300 word limitation you can check that dynamically as the user types in the main text area and give feedback in there about potential overflows S easy low avoid using Italic fonts in GUIs The DPI resolution of most screen panels is too low to make italic fonts easy to read Figure 15 23 Proposal Title Proposal Cycle his is my abstract This is my abstract Abstract max 300 words Scientific Category Cosmology and the High Redshift Universe 10 00 Related Proposals Previous Proposals Investigators Principal Investigator Co I 1 UserID Name 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Ema Telephone Affiliation woseo O Description Figure 15 Metadata associated with the proposal 24 4 Executive Subsystem Contact Author emmanuel pietriga inria fr Syntax used for suggestions S difficulty impact 4 1 Overall Organization of the UI The Operator Monitor
42. e ds9 Most of them will thus be familiar with multi scale interfaces based on a main viewport plus a magnifier plus a panner This is a disadvantage because this type of UI design is old and does not scale For instance having the magnifier as a static inset means that it is not smoothly integrated with the visualization in the main viewport and that it is potentially far from the cursor which controls the content of the magnifier as the latter shows a magnified version of region surrounding the cursor in the main viewport This causes problems of divided attention 6 that can be solved by using state of the art focus context visualization techniques such as Sigma lenses 26 Similarly the panner could be enhanced so that it behaves more like current overview viewfinder widgets see Google Maps for an example Of course if FITS images to be visualized in the spatial tab are small and do not really require the use of the panner and magnifier then the current UI layout and features will do But if it is anticipated that relatively large FITS images will be loaded then S moderate to 21 SAOImage ds9 File jsky7640075710150968980 fi fits Object dss26675 Value 21923 FKS a 12 38 35 639 5 02 39 26 48 Physical X 296 000 Y 300 000 Image x 296000 Y 300000 Frame 1 Zoom 1 000 Angle E 0 000 file edit view frame zoom scale CI region help NA ee O
43. ely impact robustness of course S moderate to hard high provide mechanisms that allow the user to correlate log entries with alarm events even if only based on time stamps making the assumption that both systems share the same time reference What actions are relevant and how this should be done from a UI design perspective requires further discussion with users but this was clearly identified as a useful feature during interviews A basic example would be to highlight log entries in a time period focused on centered around the timestamp of the selected alarm More relevant selections can probably be devised This is actually a general comment that applies beyond JLog to all OMC components and to the framework itself 36 4 4 Alarm Panel The Alarm Panel 4 displays events related to malfunctioning software and hardware components h Pine em orare ume ET aap ase fans a UE le rif found Tor CMa ALARM SYSTEM CLIENTS 92305 us ma _ 18 chan BS amp 21 Ho COB entry 1 erupt laser ci1gm E kinmtaliback activate Figure 25 Alarm Panel running standalone The auto acknowledge feature is nice but should be used with caution Search functions and dynamic query like interfaces are of lesser importance for the Alarm Panel than for JLog because the number of entries is supposed to be much lower and thus much more manageable Keyboard shortcuts as mentioned earlier for JLog
44. ely straightforward S moderate to hard moderate there is no undo redo mechanism The interface mostly follows the form fill in type of interaction style 33 and in this context undo redo is not a fundamental feature because of the impact of changes often localized to the field being edited However it is still easier for the user to fix an error by reverting back to the previous state using an undo button rather than having to remember what was the previous value and input it again which is much more cognitively demanding Difficulty 1s rated moderate to hard because from a software engineering perspective if undo redo has not been planned early in the design process it can be difficult and time consuming to add support for it this also depends on whether a single step undo or a history of the N last actions is offered S easy moderate on multiple monitor multimon configurations popups and new windows can poten tially appear on another monitor than the one displaying the OT This is a small but very annoying problem that is relatively easy to fix it should be possible with Swing to get the ID of the screen device hosting the OT s main JFrame and then relocate popups when they appear based on that information S easy low toolbar buttons should be grouped logically Right now they are all juxtaposed Figure 14 a Insert some empty space between groups of buttons that are part of the same logical groups as done e g in Figur
45. en JLog runs standalone this is ok But when run as a plugin this consumes a little too much screen real estate for the added value Reducing the width of buttons it might be possible to fit all of them on a single row maybe removing some of them that could be less often accessed than others Clear logs Filters There is also a problem of accessing buttons on the far right if the plugin s panel is not wide enough see Figure 23 S moderate moderate Change Log level and Discard level widgets from drop down lists to sliders for more efficient switching between levels Changing the UI widgets is straightforward However if moving to sliders the UI has to be very responsive to changes In other words the log table has to update quickly to the changes The caching system might be leveraged to achieve a good level of performance for this more dynamic type of query Ideally a more interactive search paradigm such as dynamic queries 32 or even basic suggestions as is now commonly found in Web query interfaces would make the search filtering more efficient The log table can be very large Dynamic queries would clearly improve 34 search filtering efficiency but might also be challenging to implement Note in both cases if the system cannot keep up with user input if it cannot refresh the table fast enough there is no point in doing this It would actually be harmful as users will not expect any lag in dynamic query interfaces More o
46. enable a more efficient use of available screen real estate and will let users navigate more efficiently in the information space This does not require completely reimplementing the OMC Many of the plugin panels can be kept almost as is As far as QuickLook is concerned the current plotting solutions will hardly scale to 60 antennas and will definitely not when thousands of baselines have to be represented Making QuickLook scale requires more UI design work working closely with end users operators and astronomers to understand how these plots will be used What information is critical How often do users look at them What actions are they likely to take in response to problems identified in the plots What is the time frame delay before these actions get reflected in the plots if at all Do users need to establish correlations between events in different plots etc Sketches of possible solutions are provided in this document Easier to implement suggestions for improvements to the current UI are also given However these are clearly incremental and do not address the above issues on their own Conclusion Our general impression is that GUIs were given relatively little attention and that several decisions that impact them were made from a software engineering perspective ignoring the actual needs of users One example of this is the fact that plugins seem to be totally independent from one another While this makes for an elegant ar
47. er mental map of the system Parana VET ne Le adora osas A 24 18 Multi scale interface prototype with embedded device block diagram and baseline info 28 19 Hierachical structure represented as a treemap this visualization provides a compact yet legible view of the tree s components 30 20 JTree used for containers in ACS Overview panell 31 21 Unconventional contract expand icons 32 22 Array tab management 33 23 JLog running as a plugin 34 TT 35 25 Alarm Panel running standalone 37 L3 93509 29 WR RP ee eed ewe S 38 27 Diagrams for subsystems make it easier to find the information item that is searched for Paranal EP uem wd 9 x bbbeev eset See hee one eee EG 30 28 Different examples of schematic representations of devices with status information Paranal VLT 40 29 Panel that would typically benefit from the user of a more visual representation of variables 41 30 Use of bar gauges to show values that are supposed to vary in specific ranges Paranal VLT 41 SIL Bae ee eee eeeee atte 4449 25 523 Pu EG PE SR EU UE A 42 32 Mount Status vs Mount Controcl ee 43 33 Project SB Search panel Scheduler panel in interactive array mode 44 34 Incorrect use of checkboxes for mutually exclusivechoices
48. es were being installed Room space is big enough to hold a few more Windows are closed UO Three LCD video displays TV sets are used to monitor the antenna array Each operator has 3 screens as in 29 but a few more will certainly be necessary when all the panels of OMC will be ready see chapter 4 of this report At VLT almost 6 meters of screen are devoted to operators For each of the 4 telescopes Setting for the VLTI is a bit larger The workspace is organised in horse shoe The screens are divided in two equal numbers for the operator and the astronomer on duty Screens are grouped in pairs with a common keyboard and mouse There is no pixel space sharing betwen the screens On the screens below the partly hidden window on the left side is not a part of the window on the left side Each pair of screens is dedicated to a specific task for the operator initial calibration etc and its location has been chosen accordingly Proposal for general layout Pictures of control rooms abound on the web All have in common to group general synthetic information into a synoptical view that can be read by all operators In analog days these screens were mostly hardwired with light bulbs while operator consoles used switches and potentiometers for remote control see below Today many technologies can be used that allow animation and video Videoprojectors can ensure a large screen projection with good c
49. exity S easy low Add separator lines to group menu items logically even if the menu does not contain many elements This will reduce errors accidental selections and make visual scanning easier S moderate to hard moderate Generally speaking marking menus or even just pie menus would be more efficient than linear pop up menus 53 4 8 2 Web Browsing According to 29 a Web browser should be available on operator AoD workstations to bring up ALMA tools on the web e g long term schedule information project status information problem reports In this document an external browser is used as an example It is not clear why a limited internal Web browser is made available as a plugin in the current implementation of the OMC instead of using a full fledged external Web browser The internal Web browser probably implemented on top of an existing Java based HTML CSS renderer clearly lacks many Web navigation features fails to render even simple pages correctly see Figure 44 and contributes to making the list of plugins longer for no apparent reason S easy moderate An external browser should be preferred unless there is a clear restriction that forbids conventional Web browsers from running on operator AoD workstations NX epietrig gns 1006 OMC http www google com E 4 D Web Bilder Videos Maps News Shopping E Mail Mehr iGoogle sucheinstellungen Anmelden Google Deutschland
50. for easy overwriting don t select it for easy inserting z y g Freauencv in Taraet Perspective ansmission Other Transitions Select Other Tr 1 2 8 Up to 4 spectral elem More than 4 spectral Look and Feel Spectral Type _ Single continuum Metal Nimbus 2 Spectral scan CDE Motif Ser Mac OS X Polarization SINGLE X amp 2 SINGLE Okay Cancel apply Transition Select Lines Add Figure 1 Direct access to Preferences tabs in the Options window model that the user has about the tool and the specification process is very important It is extremely frustrating to have very constrained editors that don t let you specify things according to your own mental model of the task but here it is the opposite you have very few constraints and are not guided much This does not help build a clear mental model of the application Addressing this means re considering not necessarily discarding but at least modifying the JTree tabbed panes GUI structure S hard major what is the best solution is not entirely clear and depends on the users mental model of the task Though we interviewed a few astronomers about the OT in Chile we do not have enough data about this to propose a full fledged solution to the problem The OT offers templates for common observations that can be edited by users This is a good start though I do not think it will be
51. g the 25 e e E operator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Session View Debug Coma AES Aa OPSErver UT 09 31 48 LST 13 46 41 Alma Mount Control El Dartboard E DartboardDv02 0 El Log Scheduler A X ur 09 31 48 LST 13 46 42 Chai v Interactive Array Full Automatic Mode Array Status Active Destr Projects ses E Array Type All Elevation RA 2000 0 Dec 2000 0 0 OOA 00 00 00 COT 00 00 00 14 56 53 02 055 38 49 64 PI Name SBModeN Al Commanded S 0 Deviation Peea ISB Mode E EE E E vet rose am Mero Offset 000 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 0000 00 proj 000 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 Projects Found SBs Found Subreflector Controls Status Project Name PI Na Ver Unbiased s 5 Gu Lo e AC rows SN Pointing k oss me po Azimuth Elevation ale Execute Stop Abort Project Info SB Details Project Name TP Single DL SB Status not complete a Project s status not com Max execution count ind PI Name Thomas Powers Priority Equinox source obj Status PartiallyObserved Status Ready Total SBs 1 Number of ExecStatus 2 Total SEs complete 0 ExecStatus 0 Broken MOE On source NO O Axes Shutdown O shutter E ry brake ON eu brake ON am PM Yes Dataflow Copy SE ID C
52. hat popped up double click on it Of course the UI component finder would require the user to memorize some terms But operators and astronomers as expert users will already be familiar with these terms as they are continually exposed to them thus this should not be a problem 29 Figure 19 Hierachical structure represented as a treemap this visualization provides a compact yet legible view of the tree s components Finally S moderate high Treemaps would be efficient replacement for several hierarchical struc tures currently represented with JTrees such as in the ACS Overview panel Treemaps see an ex ample in Figure 19 provide a compact yet legible view of the tree s components without requiring much interaction ideal for monitoring the status of nodes located at different levels of a hierarchy Combined with the smooth zooming capabilities mentioned above treemaps can be a very efficient means of naviga tion in hierarchies such as those found in the OMC 30 4 2 ALMA Tab and Creation of Arrays Faulty none Exp Ca anager OK ARCHIVE LOGGERJ ACC javacantainer OF w ACC alarmContainer OK w ACC masterContainer OK w ARCHIVE TMCDB javacontainer OK w ACCIcpnpcontainer OK w ACC javaContainer OK we OBOPS ACC javacontainer OK w ARCHIVE ACC javacantainer OK w ARCHIVE ACC cppCaontainer OK w ARCHIVE ACC ITOTALPOWER cppcCantainer OF w EXEC LAC C javatcantainer OF w EXECIACC pythoncon
53. he cursor have been greatly improved in v7 0RC It is now possible to freely pan amp zoom in the plot Zoom level can be changed with the mouse wheel There are still a few issues that could be addressed to make it even better as described below Panning is achieved by dragging the mouse horizontally in the upper and lower regions surrounding the plot itself It does not work when dragging the mouse in the plot itself S easy moderate allow panning when dragging the mouse in the central region that corresponds to the plot itself The mapping between cursor translation and plot panning is not 1 1 Depending on the zoom factor moving the cursor by N pixels will result in a displacement of the plot that is often significantly less than N pixels This breaks the impression of direct manipulation 31 but more importantly it can make panning tedious requiring large mouse trackpad movements and thus clutching S easy moderate make panning aware of the current zoom level so as to have a 1 1 mapping between cursor displacement and plot displacement There are two main behaviors when zooming in out either A the center of the screen is the focus of expansion or B the point under the cursor is the focus of expansion When zooming in 2D B is more powerful but also more difficult to get used to than A When zooming in ID as is the case here the plot only gets stretched horizontally B is still as powerful and is much easier to master it ac
54. igation patterns and usability of zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 9 4 362 389 2002 http doi acm org 10 1145 586081 586085 D R Hutchings and J Stasko Consistency multiple monitors and multiple windows In CHI 07 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 211 214 New York NY USA 2007 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 1240624 1240658 56 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 W Javed and N Elmqvist Stack zooming for multi focus interaction in time series data visualization In Proceedings of the IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium 2010 2010 G Kurtenbach and W Buxton The limits of expert performance using hierarchic marking menus In CHI 93 Proceedings of the INTERACT 95 and CHI 93 conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 482 487 New York NY USA 1993 ACM http doi acm org 10 1145 169059 169426 S Lucero Scheduling Subsystem User Guide for the Create Array Panel Scheduling Panel and Project SB Search Panel November 2007 ALMA T Moscovich F Chevalier N Henry E Pietriga and J D Fekete Topology aware navigation in large net works In CHI 09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 2319 2328 New York NY USA 2009 ACM http doi ac
55. ing and Control OMC application 10 is intended for operators and astronomers on duty It lets them startup the system create arrays manage them monitor and control devices the execution of scheduling blocks etc Many parts of ALMA can be accessed through the OMC via plugins including logs alarms antenna device status software components etc From a usability perspective the OMC is very different from the OT in the sense that it will be used by a small number of expert users that will be exposed to it for long periods of time daily They can thus be expected to behave as power users 33 that take the time to learn how to operate the software and use all of its features even if the learning curve is steep This does not mean that the UI design does not matter Power users have the capability to adapt to complex interfaces if only because their job requires it but bad UI design can have strong negative consequences This is not a question of user comfort a difficult to use over crowded UI will be the source of more errors it also means that users are more likely to fail to react quickly enough to a problem simply because they are cognitively overwhelmed with data and because their interaction with the software is impeded by tedious UI navigation tasks For critical and complex systems such as ALMA careful UI design is very important even if the users are assumed to be power users I start this review with the overall organization of
56. inria fr Syntax used for suggestions S difficulty impact 3 1 General Comments The OT can be seen as a domain specific structured document editor The interface is implemented with conventional WIMP widgets in Swing The primary elements of the interface are separated using resizable split panes This allows users to easily adapt the UI layout based on available screen real estate S easy low Ideally the application would remember the relative size of the respective split panes Right now it looks like the split panes dimensions get initialized to their default value when the application starts instead of restoring the panes dimensions according to the user s configuration from the last session Impact is low here because there aren t that many split panes overall 4 currently Menu items toolbar buttons and other widgets get disabled when they cannot be used which is good considering the number of UI components I would however suggest that the number of UI components can be decreased in some places without losing any feature For instance all tabs of the Opt ions window can be accessed directly from the Opt ions menu Figure 1 It is nice to be able to access any of the Options tab directly but 1 this is unusual and 2 this is not essential as users will seldom open this window It seems more important to decrease the number of UI components than to enable fast access to this part of the interface S easy moderate
57. ion exponent of the mapping formula needs to be decreased in order to scatter the points and increase the graphical objects dimensions In doing so the original organisation of the antennas array is not so easily recognized left 1 5 right 1 10 MET a s 55 2 A 4 LUNG L 3 h a IL LL PU As a 4 8 A a y 1 114 fy nt i MAS 4 fi 7 M ge 7 We must take into account the fact that not all slots can be used together approximatly only half of them so maybe this could lead to clearer easier to read maps This needs further investigation with real data 5 2 4 Realistic 3D approach Many photo realistic simulations are provided by the ALMA project posters for communication purposes pictures on ALMA and ESO website it would be interesting to get in touch with the people who produced these pictures Interesting examples are given below A first interest would be to show the pointing direction of the antennas this is maybe naive we are not sure of it usefullness It could appear redundant with the video monitorings at day light but may be easily extended to include status informations and maybe information flow between the arrays and correlator etc The main issue is that it will be difficult to cover the all area in one view as it is the case for the standard 2D map References 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 1
58. ipatory design workshops with operators and astronomers design of appropriate visualizations and associated interactions selecting learning and using a multi scale structured graphics infovis toolkit and integration of plugins including support for communication between some of them see later comments about the lack of synchronization between some plugins AOS Visualizer DV40 DV41 DV42 DV43 DV44 DV4S DVAG DV47 DV4E DV49 DVSO DVS1 OVS2 DV53 DVS4 DVS6 DVS7 DVSE DVS9 DV20 ovo ovi ov2 ova ova ovs ove ov7 ove ovio ovii Jovia ovis ovis ovie ovi7 ovis ovia Figure 18 Multi scale interface prototype with embedded device block diagram and baseline info 28 S moderate high A UI component finder would also enable users to more efficiently navigate in the interface just by typing keywords and component IDs in a text field the appropriate UI component would be triggered For instance to bring up the DTS Digitizer Clock for DVO1 the user would just have to 1 trigger the UI component finder with a keyboard shortcut 2 type dgck dv01 or any variation sensitive neither to case nor to token ordering 3 hit enter instead of having to 1 reach physically for the mouse 2 3 go to the View menu click on it visually scan the list for DGCK move the cursor down to that item click the left mouse button move the cursor to cell DVO1 in the chessboard t
59. is impeded by tedious UI navigation tasks The current interface based on a WIMP docking framework does not scale to the large number of plugins and antennas that have to be dealt with Because of the number of panels and antennas users will spend a lot of time managing windows as only a very limited subset of all information can fit on screen even when using three or four displays per workstation This will seriously impede navigation in the interface and consequently operator astronomer efficiency Furthermore this very abstract presentation of the informa tion prevents users from building a clear mental map of the system which would allow them to navigate in the interface more efficiently leveraging low level cognitive abilities such as spatial memory and spatial orientation Interviews with astronomers also revealed that important information is currently difficult to put in context e g with respect to baseline length or meteorological conditions making the user s task more cognitively demanding We provide concrete suggestions for enhancements but these only partially address the main issue de scribed above This issue represents a major UI challenge that cannot be addressed by incremental en hancements The overall organization of the UI should be reconsidered in favor of more advanced in formation presentation and navigation paradigms such as e g multi scale user interfaces 1 9 and multiple coordinated views 22 that will
60. izations defined in the last paragraph For instance Other techniques could be investigated variation of grain grey level variation of size variation of shapes etc A classical study of these retinal variables is 3 Bertin has shown that the various techniques are not equally good for all kind of graphics from Spence Information Visualisation Variation of grey Here we limit experimentations with 3 states only nominal low and high priority A simplified mockup using grey levels with rectangular shapes and systematic antenna numbering can be derived from the actual chessboard It suffers bad data ink ratio because of shapes boundaries ppt E 4 n Using a circle for individual status possibly lead to a compact view Using a grey background grey200 enhances contrast A color background can lead to perception problems LE E M 90000000 Variation of size can also be investigated We assign larger size to higher priority alarm Here only antennas with hight priority alarms are numbered It seems particularly efficient but 1s prone to change blindness Progressive animation should be used O e c e e o 0 gt ee u a a a AF e E e gt Variation of shape can be studied in a number of ways One can assign specific shapes for the priority levels But the association rules between shape and priority must be obvious ie very widely sha
61. ke ON ABM PM Yes AZ brake ON O EL brake ON ABM PM Yes Azimuth Jevatior 4 00 Dec 2000 ctu 010 00 00 00 010 00 00 00 15 15 18 82 055 38 37 43 DV02 es ue NN ee ee O Vertex 000 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 00 0 dffse 000 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 Pointing Subreflector Controls f Subreflector H Vertex a Antenna type ertex ALIA Status LOCATED El an E brake jn postion EE sio IN eget access mde Remate ues STATUS OK Lh AAA A CE Tes 5 olerance Metrology NOT applied 10 00 FM poing mods Applied ABM pointing model CU pointing mode NOT applied ACU pointing model NOT applied Aux ACU pointing model NOT applied prstem sats Aux ACU pointing model NOT applied T Emergency stop Stairway interlock Unset EE Handling interlock Unset Stairway interlock Ee ek Smoke alarm Unset imutt ation RA 2000 lec 200 010 00 00 00 010 00 00 00 15 15 19 16 055 38 3 A E a se epietrig oper0L Sh Create Array Mount StatusDVO2 0 X Shared Simulator 09 50 Mond 4 Operator Monitoring anc Digital Power Supply Mount ControlDV02 2010 074 F Figure 32 Mount Status vs Mount Control 43 4 6 Scheduler Project SB Search Dataflow Plugins Project SB Search and Scheduler have a similar layout thus preserving consistency across closely related components Figure 33 According to the Se
62. l 12 4 Management of tabs 13 5 Management of tabs 13 6 Proje SUCUR x uuu 3 ERR eRe SERS EASE HE ERE Ee 29 EG m 15 7 Target and Resources the very dense layout impedes legibility 16 8 Visualization of Spectral Lines a current version b dimming the absorption transmission plot so that other components of the plot such as spectral lines better stand out This might not be very convincing when printed on paper Please refer to an on line version 17 Visualization of Spectral Lines transitions displayed with a light green color on a gray background are difficult to read 2 ee 18 10 Visualization of Spectral Lines green bar moving in sync with the cursor 19 11 Spectral Lines Selector a matches transitions when putting parentheses b does not if parentheses omite 20 12 Source Visualization eue RR sus 21 13 Visualizing a FITS image in ds9 with a similar interface 22 14 Group items in the toolbar according to their semantics asin b 23 15 Metadata associated with the proposal 24 16 OMC interface with one array showing the Scheduler plugin the Mount Control plugin for one antenna and the Dataflow plugin 26 17 Basic examples of component layouts that help users build a strong
63. l attention to the colors used in the plot With all the overlap colors have to be easy to visually differentiate Another issue with the plot is that the labels of spectral lines can potentially overlap making them illegible I believe this has gotten better than what we saw in July but there are still issues When zooming in spectral lines will get farther away from one another that will leave more screen real estate for each label and eventually as one zooms in there won t be any overlap between labels But pan amp zoom navigation is fairly tedious when what you are interested in are just line labels Further enhancing pan amp zoom interaction as described later would make navigation less tedious but will not totally solve the problem S moderate moderate make the spectral lines in the plot sensitive to mouse events When a user clicks on one line or better when she just hovers over one line that line gets highlighted change its color make it thicker or any other visual feedback along with its label and the labels of all other lines are temporarily removed from the display If you d rather keep all labels visible at all times then S moderate moderate devise a layout algorithm that computes label positions so that there 1s no overlap at all e g using excentric labeling 8 even if it means moving the label away from the spectral line and add low contrasted diagonal segments that link the label to the actual line on the plo
64. lications meaning that from a Swing UI implementation perspective they should be easy to adapt to any Java2D based graphics frame work What requires extensive work is the general information presentation and navigation metaphor l The current version is buggy however popup chessboard panels are initialized to a very small size where it is impossible to read any antenna name requiring users to resize them every time they pop up 27 based on the WIMP docking framework JIDE During my stay at the OSF I implemented a quick and dirty prototype of multi scale interface based on the geographical layout of antennas integrating device panels in the zoomable canvas and showing the network formed by antennas and baselines Figure 18 The purpose of this small prototype was just to show the audience that other interface metaphors that better leverage human abilities and can show more structured information while providing more efficient means of navigation are available Obviously a solution based on the layout of antennas based on the exact geographical position of antenna pads is not optimal because the pads are scattered too thinly over a large area But I believe that a mix of multi scale interface with embedded conventional WIMP com ponents plugin panels and multiple coordinated views would represent a major step forward and allow the OMC to scale to 60 antennas Designing and implementing such a solution requires significant work partic
65. m org 10 1145 1518701 2319056 C North and B Shneiderman Snap together visualization a user interface for coordinating visualizations via relational schemata In AVI 00 Proc working conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces pages 128 135 ACM Press 2000 http doi acm org 10 1145 345513 345282 K Perlin and D Fox Pad an alternative approach to the computer interface In SIGGRAPH 93 Proc Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques pages 57 64 ACM Press 1993 Piccolo A Structured 2D Graphics Framework http www cs umd edu hcil jazz E Pietriga and C Appert Sigma lenses focus context transitions combining space time and translucence In CHI 08 Proceeding of the twenty sixth annual CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pages 1343 1352 New York NY USA 2008 ACM nttp doi acm org 10 1145 1357054 1357204 E Pietriga O Bau and C Appert Representation independent in place magnification with sigma lenses ZEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 16 1 2010 http doi ieeecomputersociety org 10 1109 TVCG 2009 98 A Pucelj I Verstovsek and A Caproni Logging Client User s Manual April 2009 ALMA S Rankin and D Hunter CONTROL Device GUI User s Document ALMA 7 0 0 S Scott and D Shepherd Operations General User Interface GUI Requirements November 2006 COMP 70 10 00 00 010 A SPE D Shepherd R Laing A Peck D Emerson J Mangum R Lucas T H
66. n search S easy moderate searching for a particular pattern only takes the user to the next matching entry There is no highlighting of the entire set of matches making it impossible for the user to get an overview of the result set or quickly scan through it If the above described dynamic query style interface cannot be implemented at least highlight all matching entries in the table when a search is performed Drilldown when a user drills down i e when he asks for detailed logs for a given time period the rows that were originally selected by the user to specify the time period get unselected with additional rows being inserted within that range It makes it very difficult to relate the two states S easy moderate original rows should remain selected or just highlighted by changing their background color and additional rows that got inserted should be highlighted too possibly with a different color to make it easy for users to differentiate both types of events original events newly inserted ones from the detailed log S easy low Table columns can be reordered with a right mouse drag on the column header This is usually done with a left mouse drag without colliding with reordering actions Filters Section 3 5 mentions that some combinations of filters can result in empty log tables S easy to moderate low to moderate If this can be checked automatically by the system it would be good to provide feedback to raise this con
67. nal contract expand icons The ALMA Subsystems panels use unconventional icons to show hide detailed information about each subsystem Figure 21 S easy low Unless this particular couple of icons bears explicit semantics that operators and astronomers have seen before in other telescopes operations UI it would be better to replace it with more conventional icons such as the ones used to symbolize contracted expanded branches of a JTree or file folder tree in Windows Explorer like expanding menus Device Explorer panel according to 10 Section 6 4 2 Each node has a tool tip text which provides the explicit state of the node and some additional information As detailed in Section 4 7 about QuickLook tooltips pose problems of persistency and delay and in the case of this panel do not allow users to get an overview of the state of nodes the user has to hover one particular element and can thus only see one at a time S easy moderate Provide essential status information in the node s label 32 ion View Debug Corba Acs A 14 ArrayOO1 Mount Contral Close this Array Tab Figure 22 Array tab management S easy low Array tabs all contain a contextual menu triggered by clicking on the arrow next to their label Figure 22 This menu only features one action that corresponds to closing the tab If this action is the only one expected to appear in this menu replace the arrow by a cross symbolizing tab closing simil
68. on Figure illustrates one such issue the Add and Delete buttons are actually used to manage the tabs adding a new tab deleting the selected one But their semantics is ambiguous Being at the bottom of the form one does not think that they are related to tab management It looks more like you have to click on Add to submit validate the source that you just input in the form above which is not the case S easy high at least rename Add and Delete to things like Create Additional Source and Delete Current Source better replace Delete with small crosses at the right of each tab label as is done in other parts of the interface see e g Figure 5 and in many tab based interfaces such as Web browsers this will also make tab management more consistent throughout the OT move the renamed Add button either to the top next to the tab labels or keep it at the bottom but move it to the far left or far right Its meaning will be less ambiguous that way Better replace the Add button by a icon on the right side of the rightmost tab as is done in the latest versions of Firefox or Safari the latter puts the icon on the far 12 FUE TIO LITE LY PR ILLA Y LC RS WR RE PPS CHIA 7 SEP LLE SPP LO ngc4587 SinglePoint je Sexagesimal display v RA 12 38 35 479 Dec 02 39 24 516 896 0 z optical 0 002989 Parallax 0 00000 Target Type amp Single Point Field gt 1 rectangular field Field Center Coordinates Co
69. ontrast when equiped with redundant lights they have a MTBF long enough cf Barco website for products a ars ar all PN r d RIGHT EDF national electricity network dispatching circa 1970 LEFT Motorway tunnel Fourvi re Lyon mid 1970 s Note the use of video control RIGHT Rio de Janeiro subway from Barco website 2010 LEFT A counter example the Tevatron Control room of Fermilab copied from the website 2010 Due to the nature of the process being controled there is no evident need for a synoptical view at the VLT Each telescope is operated individually The collective knowledge from one telescope team to the other is reduced to the clock and weather conditions so screen duplication is not a major issue This is not the case for ALMA The video monitoring seems a good starting point for designing the control room layout Video monitoring was initialy unplanned but many interviewed people acknowledged the need for it We should recall here that ALMA control is indeed a remote process control It is understandable that operators need a grasp of the real situation that can be trusted this should be investigated later by psycho ergo Another interesting item was the whiteboard found in the control room picture below along with schematic posters lying on walls picture missing The control room can be organized in many ways Using a large rectangular pannel of screens limits the field of vie
70. opy ExBIK ID Stop this SB EndStatus Start ExBIk EXBIK Intent Scan Subscan Figure 16 OMC interface with one array showing the Scheduler plugin the Mount Control plugin for one antenna and the Dataflow plugin array can fit on screen at a given time even when using three or four displays per workstation This will seriously impede navigation in the interface and consequently operator astronomer efficiency Issues with the docking framework were also raised by a group of early users in 2007 and corroborate our own findings I did not have the opportunity to check whether some of these legitimate concerns were addressed or not such as A Multiple instances of plugins are not currently possible or B You cannot apply a different layout when the software is already operational A is clearly a very significant issue Reading more recent documents I believe it has been addressed but in case it has not it definitely has to be A makes navigation extremely cumbersome and prevents making comparisons between and or contrasting values for similar components I believe that B has not yet been addressed as I recall operators still complaining about it during interviews at the OSF This is clearly an issue as different users will want to customize the interface according to their preferences based on their mental model of the system The chessboard is used as an entry point for many plugins to specify which antenna the opera
71. ords Type 7 ABSOLUTE RELATIVE Offset RA 0 00000 et Dec 0 00000 Lacs osse TN Figure 4 Management of tabs Investigators Principal Investigator User ID Name Email Telephone are Figure 5 Management of tabs right which seems less convenient 13 14 3 2 Project Structure Sci Goal Name Source Name Field Type 9 3 TEST 0 Mngc4587 ngc4587 Point Ga Science Plan ngc4587 Point Ej ience Goal ngc4587 generated 3 Field Setup 5 Spectral Setup 3 Control Parameters 3 Calibration Setup Parameters El ngc4587 SFI E ngc4587 12marray SB 9 1 Target o R ngc4587 Science C Resources 9 6 1 Field Source 3 Primary ngc4587 9 1 Instrument Setup 3 Setup for null 12mArray SB 1 BBC J 1 Observing Parameters 3 ngc4587 Params IL Spectral Spatial z Project PASSED validation with O errors and O warnings Description v No errors found Figure 6 Project Structure In the JTree scheduling blocks generated from a given science goal are presented as children of the science goal node Figure 6 But apparently there can only be one top level SB node which I guess corresponds to a ObsUnitSet in the JTree for a set of coherent SBs trying to Generate SBs from the Selected Goal when this has been done before prompts the user for a choice overwriting the previously generated ObsUnitSet or c
72. ot allow some operations that might be essential such as comparing and contrasting plots for antennas or baselines that belong to different subsets 49 4 8 Miscellaneous 4 8 1 Animations Widgets Layout Colors and Fonts trol R7 0 epietriq operO1 ES0 UT 10 23 Figure 38 Part of the OMC status bar Colors are used in many places in the UI to reflect the status of hardware software components using green orange yellow and red This conventional color coding scheme is appropriate but because of the fairly intensive use of these color throughout the interface fine tuning the colors is important as too bright vivid color values can be tiring for the human eye Knowing that operators and AoD will watch the display for long hours this issue should not be neglected S easy high desaturate or darken the colors and pay attention to color blindness it was anticipated that operators would not be color blind but actually we met at least three people in Santiago and at the OSF who were color blind Note the colors were very saturated and bright when we were at the OSF see Figure 39 especially the red and green The green I saw when exploring the OMC in February seemed darker Figure 38 but the red is probably still too bright Figure 39 bottom left SBs Found 5 SB Name Project 4 Execute Stop Abort SB Details Priority Figure 39 Highly saturated colors are tiring for the human e
73. otal power with square law detectors Rest Frequency Receiver Band Dynamic Range Switching Switching Type Dwell Time NO SWITCHING Number of Positions w E dead Time p o000o f Ty Correlator Configuration Integration Duration 1 02400 ls rl Channel Average Duration 512 00000 ms AP_CORRECTED T Dump Durations12 00000 Atmos Phase Correction Data To Save BL Only BaseBand Configurations LO2 Freque Instantaneous Data R 10 96875 GHz 35 048 MB s Sideband Separation FREQUENCY OFFSET REJECTION Data Product CROSS AND AUTO Center Freq Rest 661 06728 GHz Name BB 1 Reference Position Offset B Field Pattern 3 a E Beamsize 661 GHz 12m 7 8 arcsec 7m 13 4 arcsec Type PointingPattern Offset Observing Parameters El BandpassCal OpticalPointing Holography PolarizationCal FocusCal AtmosphericCal DelayCal n PhaseCal PointingCal AmplitudeCal Figure 7 Target and Resource Add BaseBand Deci ase Ran Results Setup Preferences Sideband s to prioritise USB Base band config s to prioritise v BBC 1 v LSB L BBC2 BBC3 BBC4 Calculate LOs LO Frequency 651 12866 GHz Total Data Rate 35 048 MB s LO2 Switching Baseband Name BB 1 LO2 Frequency Switching Desired Center Freq Rest 661 06728 Actual Center Freq Rest 661 06728 GHz Actual Center Freq Sky 659
74. out it a false impression conveyed by the use of a checkbox S easy moderate Replace the checkbox by two mutually exclusive radio buttons Keep entries matching this filter and Discard entries matching this filter or variations on these wordings Keyboard shortcuts as mentioned earlier the OMC is a tool for power users and keyboard shortcuts will be very beneficial to userd S easy moderate Make sure that e most often used commands have key bindings e input focus sequence between widgets follows a sensible order Swing FocusManager e navigation in the table also available with the toolbar on the 2nd row can also be performed with key bindings such as arrow keys and page up down for reaching the top bottom of the table Home can be used to reach the selected row when it got out of the scrollpane s viewport The main issue with JLog however is the lack of synchronization with the Alarm Panel when running as an OMC plugin Both plugins seem to be totally unaware of each other requiring users to manually relate entries between them This seems to be due in part to the fact that it was decided from an architectural point of view that plugins should be totally independent from each other While this might make sense from a software engineering perspective it does not from the perspective of the user I would argue here that the users needs take precedence over conserving a pure and elegant architecture as long as it does not negativ
75. pServer UT 09 49 59 LST 14 04 55 Chai v R Mount ControIDV02 0 amp Xf e On source NO Axes Shutdown shut 09 49 59 LST 14 04 55 Chai Y on source NO Axes Shutdown Ce LST 14 04 55 Chai v ea brake ON EL brake ON ABM PM Yes imutt atio R 000 DC muth ev i 2000 De 000 010 00 00 00 010 00 00 00 15 15 09 77 055 38 3 Actu 010 00 00 00 010 00 00 00 15 15 07 94 4 055 38 37 74 AAA A NAAA AN SS AAA AAA 000 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000 00 00 00 X z 00 00 leo l 0 0 Commanded 34 po Delta 0 0 0 0 leo Delta 0 0 lo New Delta po New Delta k Tip Tilt Rotation Tip Tilt Rotation Actual 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 o o 00 El epietrigOoper01 Sh Create Array Mount StatusDV02 0 X Shared Simulator 09 49 E E Mond Operator Monitoring anc 4 Digital Power Supply Mount ControlDV02 0 20 A2 A e s A NX E Operator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Session View Debug Corbal Acs Alma OpServer UT 09 50 09 LST 14 05 05 E Mount ControIDV02 0 E Mount StatusDV02 0 5 X On source NO Axes Shutdown CARE LST 14 05 05 Chai v O On source NO Axes Shutdown shul T 09 50 09 LST 14 05 05 Chai v CI brake ON EL bra
76. pe Source Obj 2 FIXX28 XX29 XX3 0 0950 18 6 09 50 16 09 50 15 09 50 14 09 50 13 09 50 13 09 50 11 09 50 11 Log Message Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by 5 Air temperature returned by File Air temperature returned by z Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Ar temperature returned by Air temperature returned by Detailed info Command Line Control LogField TimeStamp 2010 02 01T Entry Type Warning Source Object CHEDULING_ 2 alma scheduli ReceiveEvent Line 498 Routine processExecBl Host lgas01 Process ACC javaCont Context Thread Log ID 37XX38JXX39Xx40 oc XX49 XX50 27 YYOS YYOS YY10 DataFlow Digital Power Supply Events Filler Holography DSP Holography Receiver IPrinrity Log m able not filtered Engineering y Q Log Input Log Level Control Messenger Thread 2013 Mount Control Mount Status Optical Telescope Project SB Search Prototype Correlator Quick Commands Quicklook Requests Scheduler Shift Log Web Browsing ExBlk Intent 09 51 Monday 2010 02
77. plot per window Each window can be freely moved and resized by the user This mode allows monitoring many plots at the same time but uses much more screen real estate typically an entire screen Figure 36 It is not clear reading the documentation 15 how the charts are laid out by default when switching to Scatter mode It is written that they are laid out sequentially from left side of op console Does this mean that the windows get arranged in a matrix like space filling layout as shown on Figure 36 S easy high make sure this is the case and that the default layout algorithm uses available screen real estate in an optimal manner It is good that users can freely move and resize each window in Scatter mode but users should be spared the tedious task of having to manually move and 46 resize the windows to obtain a usable layout S easy high at the very minimum it should be possible to save restore Scatter mode layouts additionally the default layout should be predictable meaning that the ordered sequence of displays should always be the same so that a given display always ends up in the same place in the matrix P ARRAYOO1 22 GX P ARRAYOOT1 22 E B ARRAYOO1 22 30 3 B X B ARRAYOO1 2 B X ARRAYOO1 22 3 0 X Aperture Efficiency vs Time Seeing vs Time uncorrected Delay vs Time uncorrected Bandpass Phase Curve corrected Pointing Offsets uncorrected 0 21 7 54 1225 eee eee idi T q 300 i s RH
78. proposals It is important for the OT to be easy to learn and use We provide suggestions for enhancements These however do not completely address the main issue the current GUI structure prevents novice users from building a clear mental model of the application and observation proposal editing process Users are prone to getting lost in the large set of panels and components that constitute the OT Addressing this issue would require to spend more time with both designers and end users of the OT Two general approaches to address this issue are proposed 1 try to linearize the observation proposal s input process by re considering the current GUI structure 2 keep the current structure but make the contextual help even more contextual with finer grained suggestions about possible next steps Executive Subsystem From a usability perspective the OMC is very different from the OT in the sense that it will be used by a small number of expert users that will be exposed to it for long periods of time daily Power users have the capability to adapt to complex interfaces if only because their job requires it but bad UI design can have strong negative consequences even for this type of user A difficult to use over crowded UI will be the source of more errors it also means that users are more likely to fail to react quickly enough to a problem simply because they are cognitively overwhelmed with data and because their interaction with the software
79. re detail may help diagnose it A generic 8x8 matrix is used here for simplification When depicting the subpart states for all antennas one can use a group of 5 matrices in sequence for antenna 11 AGO RnB RR m YYO1 YYO2 It has some rx ALI ICI gt Tracking Receivers Cryogenics Local Osc Backend linear variation 12345 T HENHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENEEEEE III III n SHER RRR ERE RRR RRR ER RRR RRR EERE PRR RRR eee ee c SHEE REE ER RRR RRR RRR RRR RRR PERE eee BRR ERR ERR RRR RRR RRR RRR ERR BRR BRR ERR ERE RRR RRR RRR Bee 64 x 5 is maybe too big unless it runs along all the synoptical view as it is on the top of the Archives 1 G 0 A A possibility is to have it split in two using the central space for general information of the array status or a map ini uu d HE sss other SERRE sssss general HE 23244 Information Another possibility is to group the 5 subparts for each antenna and keep a general matrix organization 5 2 2 Value coding The state of subsystem is described as 1 un assigned 2 nominal 3 low priority alarm 4 high priority 5 extreme priority 29 p 16 suggests a color coding of rectangular boxes for these 5 levels 1 blue 2 green 3 yellow 4 red 5 blinking red This can be used directly with the 3 spatial organ
80. red Road signs are a good exemple triangle for warning circle for forbidden things square for information can be associated to low high and nominal respectively Shapes can be associated with colors red circle yellow triangle blue square a la Kandinsky However none of these schemes are particularly efficient here NEHNONANON a eens HN NON E AA A 0 AA A AA OA H 0 0 One can also rely on a simplified diagramatic view of an antenna and use it repeatedly to depict the full array status A EE ABABA B L C9 e Lie When a matrix organization is used this may lead to readability problems but the sequential organization might be studied further 6 J Ta i LP ox F n T i 4 f A a p l y a 1 l I J I i B A L B8 BN CAN V u fr l EL EE JJ LI A ca Ve gu A 1 3 d E us z L Pe 9 y M i i m she gt mn n ct ri rd aem GA 8 1 NH 5 2 3 Cartographic approach Antennas physical locations are pre defined among approx 130 slots The figure below depicts the location of these slots great dispersion happens but a spiral like pattern is visible note if this pattern has some kind of importance in the general operation of ALMA this should be taken into account in some way Roughly half of the slots are located in the central area In order to provide a usefull synoptical view two solutions are availa
81. s between components something that cannot be done with text alone and contribute to reducing the user s cognitive load overall Figure 28 illustrates this with additional examples from the VLT interface for different hardware components 38 eal AT Air Conditioning wat2tcs File Std Options 5 AT Liquid Cooling amp wat2tcs IE Figure 27 Diagrams for subsystems make it easier to find the information item that 1s searched for Paranal VLT 39 File Std Options 347 360 76 254 issguiTunnel wvgvliti bao aj ul a H N NIL 4 gw ag al GO QO C omi QO Sen Initials Comment 0 30 Ou Figure 28 Different examples of schematic representations of devices with status information Paranal VLT 40 log DV02 0 PSA DVO O Power Down Analog Rack O Modules O Current Limits O Shutdown Commanded Global O Fan Details O AC Status O Voltage Limits O DC Status O Over Temperature O Fan Warning Hide Details Device Info 17 A 17 9905 Lambdavega current Modules 17V 0 0000 17V E 17 9905 max current 0 0000 0 0000 0 0000 9 0056 4 9916 17 9868 shutdown current 4 9916 voltage 17 9868 18 9745 min voltage 0 0000 6 0000 0 0000 0 0000 0 0000 16 9760 max voltage 0 0000 shutdown voltage 17 9868 16 9760 6 9990 PV 1 9874 FW 7 9863 0 0000 0 0000 7 9865 1 98
82. s of possible but partial solutions They could be combined with other research results in time series visualization e g 11311141118 and would have to be discussed refined and tested with users S moderate moderate The following are easier to implement suggestions for improvements to the current UI They are clearly incremental and do not address the above issues on their own Selecting a plot by clicking on its name in the caption area should highlight it in the plot area wider stroke brighter color but no blinking Conversely hovering a given plot should highlight its name in the caption area and trigger the same highlighting for easier reading and consistency of behavior To allow easier comparison contrasting and to make it easier to check for correlations add synchro nized vertical bar cursors to the different charts that share the same X axis e g all time series as the currently active chart the chart in which the mouse cursor is currently situated The same can be done with a horizontal cursor for the Y axis when it makes sense According to 15 A drag and release in the direction towards lower right will zoom in A drag and release in the direction towards upper left will zoom out to restore the unzoomed This is somewhat unconventional and not very intuitive Moreover it is not clear how this fits with panning in the graph when zoomed in which is usually performed with left mouse button dragging The
83. t In this case visually highlighting the line and label currently hovered by the mouse cursor is still a very good idea Last comment about the plot it is not clear to me and was not to the people interviewed at the OSF either what the top and bottom green lines moving in sync with the cursor mean see Figure 10 S easy moderate Ignore the parentheses in Filter Species text area ofthe Select spectral lines window Figure 11 We were told that astronomers are not used to parentheses in the syntax and will likely type expressions that do not contain parentheses They should not be forced to input the parentheses The problem is that if parentheses are omitted the expression does not match anything Figure Ifa VS L 1 b In both versions of the OT that we saw in July and and in December at the OSF navigation capabilities in the visualization were quite limited significantly impeding astronomers exploratory processes Things 18 Editors Spectral Spatial Forms Catal Observed Frequency 999 POS POS 20909 A 77000 PAS ss 02 03 04 05 us s 08 pon pm Visualisation O 13 C 34 5 J 13 C 34 8 Y 0 J 5 4 13 C 3415 4 0 J 4 3 13 C 34 5 4 3BT 3438 v 0 4 3 eee a E ERE m olog 100100 150100 200100 Tf J 450lo0 500100 v Receiver Bands Transmission v Other Transitions Select Other Transitions Figure 10 Visualization of Spectral Lines green bar moving in sync with t
84. t un e 4 on La 4 n cor Figure 36 Problems of scalability in terms of number and complexity of the data plots to monitor Beyond the problem of having to monitor and manage more than a dozen different charts the major problem of QuickLook is that the current plotting solutions will hardly scale to 60 antennas and will definitely not when thousands of baselines have to be represented The main issues are related to the legibility of the plots tis not possible to overlay in the same window more than 60 plots except for scatterplots e t is not possible for users to distinguish more than a thousand different color coded baselines tis challenging and for most people impossible to efficiently distinguish more than 60 color coded antennas it would be challenging even if there were just 20 or 30 antennas 47 ALMA Pipeline Quicklook ALMA Pipeline Quicklook ARRAY001 22 30 32 m x Phase Curve vs Time uncorrected Phase RMS vs Baseline uncorrected Properties Save as Zoom In d Zoom Out gt Phase RMS degrees Auto Range gt 0 00 ee 05 42 30 05 43 00 05 43 30 05 44 00 05 44 30 05 45 00 05 45 30 05 46 00 05 46 30 Time UT BUREO1 m BUREO2 BUREO3 BUREO4 BUREOS 73 100 125 150 175 200 225 Baseline Length m CAL AMPLI CAL_AMPLIE CAL DELAY CAL DELAYE Tau SysTemp BandPhase BandAmpli CALPHASE PhaseRM
85. tainer OK w TELCAL ACC cpnpcContainer GK e CONTROL wA CONTROL ACC fpythonContainer OF w CONTROL ACE fjavaContainer OK we CONTROL ACC fcopContainer OK we CONTROL AM BSOCKETSERVER pythonContainer OK w CONTROL DMC cppicantainer OK w CONTROL ARTM fcopContainer OK w CONTROLILMC cppContainer OF w CONTROLSFOGOL copContainer OK w CONTROL DSOl copcontainer OK w CONTROL DA31 cppcontainer OK Figure 20 JTree used for containers in ACS Overview panel In the ACS Overview panel it is not clear how redundant the green ticks and the OK strings are Figure 20 S easy low If there is a single icon corresponding to each possible status string the status string could be discarded making each item shorter and decreasing the overall complexity of course 1f the mapping between icons and status strings 1s not 1 1 this suggestion does not make sense S easy low if it is expected that the containers will be started stopped often provide start stop icons on each line as for subsystems Figure 21 to perform these actions instead of doing this through a popup menu so as to minimize the number of steps required to perform the action 31 EY X ACS Alma OPERATIONAL sequential Subsystems A ARCHIVE OPERATIONAL SCHEDULING OPERATIONAL CONTROL OPERATIONAL DT OS oc kets ener OPERATIONAL COR MONITOR LNENOVEN ELCAL OPERATIONAL ORR OPERATIONAL SCIENCE OPERATIONAL OL OPERATIONAL Figure 21 Unconventio
86. ters 115 1466 JPL 1134 3355 PL ADA Select Spectral Lines k er Species vailable 13co Transition Frequency Catal Transition Frequency GHz Catalogue ALMA Band i TN Ju Ui uy du Pe Vet DL ON boron MT Frequency GHz Min so Max 950 44 Search Online Reset Filters Remove Figure 11 Spectral Lines Selector a matches transitions when putting parentheses b does not if parentheses omitted one particular receiver band could highlight lines in this frequency range in the table of available lines Last comment in an earlier version of the OT the Spectral Line Selector was triggered by clicking on checkbox Other Lines Clicking on that box would also change the status of this check box which controls the visibility of other lines in the plot In 7 0RC this part of the interface has been redesigned and does not feature this unconventional behavior any more I just want to emphasize that this type of behavior with side effects should be avoided 20 3 4 Spatial Tab ea 86 XII e LACER Fov Parameters Frequency used 0 00000 GHz i Refresh Lo md DnMENENMMMENM i source Antenna Diameter amp 12m 7m Main beam size 0 0 arcsec Show Fovicircle v Image Query Image Server Digitized Sky Version Il at ESO Y Image Size arcmin 10 Query Target ngc4587 Source
87. tor wants 26 Legend File Std Options Actions Panels Help LO Colors Opened _ Faulty WS Colors Inserted Retracted FECEEREREEECE FEEEEEEEEEEEE C C 4 H C Cc C J Ae 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Figure 17 Basic examples of component layouts that help users build a stronger mental map of the system Paranal VLT to get detailed information about It is a very compact widget that does a good job overall How ever the OMC s interface lacks a representation of arrays and of the entire ALMA system that is closer to their actual physical geographical layout This type of visualization should not be neglected It greatly helps users build a clear mental model mental map of the system which then allows them to more efficiently navigate in the interface leveraging low level cognitive abilities such as spatial memory and spatial orientation Such capabilities are left totally unexploited by the current UI based on a WIMP docking framework In the case of ALMA the advantage of such visual representations Figure 17 gives basic examples from the VLT goes beyond this interviews with operators and astronomers revealed that information about baselines is essential and some of it has to be interpreted relative to the baseline s length or to the meteorological conditions which can vary from one section of the site to another from which I infer
88. tually feels more natural S easy low keep the location under the cursor invariant when zooming in out instead of the current plot viewport s center In other words the plot should expand contract around the imaginary vertical bar that corresponds to the current cursor location instead of the imaginary vertical bar located at the center of the plot s viewport S moderate high A more ambitious goal would be to support dynamic queries in the spectral tab to further assist astronomers in their exploration of possible observations Right now spectral lines get selected in an independent window where they are listed in a table and then get visualized in the plot when the user is done with that selection process The two parts of the interface could be made more synchronous Selections in the Spectral Line Selector could automatically appear in the plot only temporarily if just hovered by the cursor in the table and permanently if actually put in the selection list Conversely selecting a frequency range in the plot either through a manual selection or by selecting 19 ADA Select Spectral Lines Filter Species Available j faco y Transition Frequenc 13 CO v 0 J 1 0 110 2014 Transition Frequency GHz Catalogue ALMA Band 13 CO v 0 J 3 2 Se 1113100 v 0 J 4 3 JU UP uuu 123 45 67 8 910 Ri 3 CO v 6 5 Frequency GHz pu Min sor Max 950 44 Search Online Reset Fil
89. unter A Hales I de Gregorio Monsalvo R Aviles and M Olivare GUI recommendations Operator Interface for ALMA operations at the ATF and OSF June 2007 B Shneiderman Direct manipulation A step beyond programming languages Human computer interaction a multidisciplinary approach pages 461 467 1987 B Shneiderman Dynamic queries for visual information seeking IEEE Software 11 6 70 77 1994 FOR dolcorg 10 7109 52 329404 B Shneiderman C Plaisant M Cohen and S Jacobs Designing the User Interface Strategies for Effective Human Computer Interaction Sth Edition Addison Wesley 2009 ISBN 0 321 53735 1 E R Tufte Visual Explanations Graphics Press 1997 ISBN 0 9613921 2 6 ZVTM Zoomable Visual Transformation Machine 57
90. w for the various operators B synoptical view rl This can be harmless if the people are in front of their most frequently used information This organisation is interesting if the content of the synoptical view can be shared with people from outside looking through a glass window as it is the case at the OSF Another usual configuration is a circular shape ee 2 synoptical view A E j pm E gt Pd P ll S y f N f i Further investigation requires the actual OSF room and operator consoles dimension but we believe that the actual room is satisfactory The synoptical view should include the informations shared by all actors in a synthetic way This could be Meteo The running observation program list of scheduling blocks and thier current status On site video monitoring as it is done already Global state view of the telescope meteo program status amp video 5 3 Global state view questions for design The goal of the global state view 1s to provide a summary of the status of all parts under control coordinated with a schematics of the process that explicits the relationship between the parts It 1s a read only permanent animation with no interaction with the operators Its overall readability must be carefully studied To our knowledge there is no paper in the ALMA documentation that provides a global view of ALMA in operation
91. x execution count indefinite il h Project s status not complete Priority se Pl Name Thomas Powers Status Ready Total SBs complete 0 Status PartiallyObserved Number of ExecStatus 3 Total SBs failed 0 Total SBs 1 ExecStatus 0 Broken Total SBs complete O ExecStatus 1 Broken Total SBs failed 0 ExecStatus 2 Broken 4 3m EN E SB Name Project AR P AIV Square Law T TP Single Dish Figure 33 Project SB Search panel Scheduler panel in interactive array mode The UI is densely packed in both Interactive and Queued scheduling modes giving a false impression of complexity This is symptomatic of the quest for screen real estate that results from the use of a purely WIMP based UI design as discussed earlier Section 4 I One direct negative consequence is that the four tables text areas in the lower part of the pane have to be wrapped in scroll panes that feature both a horizontal and vertical bars Combined with the small viewport size this makes it very difficult to read the data displayed in these components as it entails many scrollbar manipulation actions but also because the scrollbar widgets themselves take screen real estate from an already very small viewport S moderate high redesign this panel so as to avoid horizontal scrollbars I believe you can afford to make this panel bigger as it seems to be one that
92. xists with the Proposal and Program tabs These more or less correspond to the main two phases in the Overview pane But when one switches from one tab to the other very few things change I understand that there is a strong intersection between the two phases if only be cause the observing program heavily depends on what has been specified in the science proposal but the interface fails to provide the user with any contextual information about this Scheduling Blocks SBs disappear when going to the proposal tab but most of the remaining parts of the interface do not change It is good in a way since from Program you can do everything you can do from Proposal but still it is confusing S easy moderate the two phases are color coded in the Overview Why not use differ ent color schemes for the widgets in the interface depending on whether the user is in Proposal mode or Program mode For instance the background color of the title bar of each split pane Project Structure Editors couldchange depending on which of the two modes is selected Same thing for the focus color currently selected tabs See Figure 2 The Program blue color is nice The Proposal green color should be made less saturated if it is to be used in more places in the GUI as suggested here General issue with widget organization in the Editors pane one doesn t always realize that there 1s 11 Fov Parameters Image Query Target ngc4587 SinglePoint Sourc
93. y be done with simple alpha blending src over compositing balance between alpha values in the transition range would have to be set through iterative refinement The goal here is not to produce an aesthetically pleasing result in a way this is a side effect but to allow users to compare and contrast plots from consecutive subsets For a given time series if the Y value for a given time stamp is supposed to be about the same for all antennas baselines in other words if all plots are supposed to be superimposed or very close to one another then no matter which subset is currently displayed show some kind of low contrasted gray background filled envelope bounding minimum and maximum Y values across time This will help identify outliers Possibly add a 3D plot to the chart orthographic projection that will serve as an interactive overview of all antenna baseline plots X and Y axes are the same as in the main chart Z axis is used to The optimal number will probably depend on each chart knowing that it might actually be better to choose the same not necessarily optimal number for each chart so as to maintain consistency between them 48 organize the 60 or 1000 single plots into a 3D surface that shows an overview of all values not much detail but all plots seen at the same time and can be used as an alternative to the temporal slider to select which subset to display by direct manipulation The above ideas are just example
94. ye 50 As for several VLT panels Figure 40 right several ALMA panels feature a small blinking heart Figure 40 left to indicate the status of the software UI panel s connection with the actual system component Blinking elements are very effective at drawing users attention The current behavior blink when con nection is OK thus most of the time is thus not advised S easy low Blinking should be used for short periods of time to draw the user s attention when something is wrong Not the other way around Figure 40 Blinking heart in the OMC interface left and at the VLT right The current drop down menu lists all plugins in an uncategorized flat list Figure 41 S easy moderate Grouping plugins by category e g all control device UI panels in a hierarchical menu would help navigate in the set of available views 609 A D NA EDIELFIGIOUG TEE 100 E OMC El Operator Monitoring and Control R7 0 epietrig oper01 ESO Session Debug Alma j Calendar Dartboard Corbal Aes Alma OpServer UT 09 51 25 LST 14 06 21 Array Tabs Manage Array Tabs Save this Tab Save this Tab as Background Threads gt Uncategorized Views Alarms Analog Power Supply Antenna Status Antennas Log X Scheduler max 1 mex ire ei Je File View Search Drill down Expert X09 LO Log level Discard level 6 Debug xx19box20 bebe TimeSta v Entry Ty

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