Communi-Board-A Notice Board for Seamless Communication with Dispersed Personnel

抄録

Supervisory systems such as in power plants require complex tasks for users to communicate with each other. During a maintenance period or in case of system malfunctions, skilled staff members have to go to the actual field of the plant involved and check equipment directly, and operators in the central control room have to support for staff members. But, it is very difficult for operators to contact the appropriate staff member and encourage collaboration, because there is no way to know current location of the staff member and to contact him/her directly.
In addition, supervisory system users need to use several different styles of communication which depend on the phase of the users tasks. For example, an operator may get collaboration between staff members by personal intervention as well as need the help of other operators to do difficult task . Also, they have to switch styles of communication frequently.
We propose a new extended user interface model to overcome these problems and we propose a system based on the model. Communi-Board, which is a notice board system, provides seamless communication with dispersed staff members by two functions. One is quick contacting to dispersed staff members by chasers which indicate member locations, and the other is automatic changing of communication styles covering all situations by simple action.