Since human-machine interfaces (HMIs) facilitate human interaction with control systems, it is critical that your plant has a well-designed, easy-to-navigate HMI that can evolve with your system. However, as HMI design best practices have evolved in recent years, it has been challenging for many organizations to advance their older HMIs. Throughout the last decade, the International Society for Automation has put a lot of time and effort into developing the ISA-101 standard with the goal of helping organizations improve operator effectiveness through the creation and maintenance of HMIs that promote situational awareness and ultimately increase operator effectiveness and uptime.

This white paper expands on the ideas in ISA-101 by providing more details on the following key topics:

• A brief history of the evolution of HMI design over the past three decades

• The basic concepts of situational awareness, multi-tiered HMI screens, and the HMI lifecycle

• Using situational awareness in your HMI design to increase operational efficiency