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Laboratory studies have shown that ecological interfaces can enhance operator performance in process control. However, limited verification and validation studies in representative settings are impeding the adoption of the Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework in the nuclear domain. A companion article presents an application of EID to the secondary side of a Boiling Water Reactor plant simulator, demonstrating that the framework can lead to display features and verification criteria relevant to supporting operators in both anticipated and unanticipated situations. This article presents an empirical study as a first step towards the validation of EID in the nuclear domain. The results suggest that ecological displays have a marked advantage in supporting operator performance during monitoring for unanticipated events as compared to mimic-based displays. The ecological displays did not support operator performance differently for other types of tasks. This study provides supporting or validation evidence that EID is effective at a scale and level of complexity that is representative of nuclear power plant operations. The implications for introducing ecological displays into NPP control rooms are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accident investigations have revealed that unanticipated events are often precursors of major accidents. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to interface design for complex systems do not explicitly support problem solving during unanticipated events. Ecological Interface Design (EID) is a theoretical framework for designing computer interfaces that explicit!y aims to support worker adaptation, especially during unanticipated events, leading to more robust user interfaces. However, limited verification and validation research in representative settings is impeding the adoption of the EID framework in the nuclear domain. This article presents an example by applying EID to the secondary side of a boiling water reactor plant simulator. The interface designers constructed abstraction hierarchy, causal, and part-whole models to acquire pertinent knowledge of the work domain and designed five ecological displays to represent the plant processes. These displays are analytically shown to contain visualization properties that could support monitoring and diagnosing unanticipated events in accordance to the claims of the EID framework. The analytical evaluation of the visualization features of the displays also illustrates that the EID framework could be applied to improve current verification practice. A companion article reports an empirical evaluation of these ecological displays to validate whether these properties could enhance operator performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We determine whether an ecological interface display for nuclear power plant operations supports improved situation awareness over traditional and user-centered displays in a realistic environment. Background: Ecological interface design (EID) has not yet been fully evaluated with real operators facing realistic scenarios. Method: Ecological displays were evaluated alongside traditional and user-centered "advanced" displays in a full-scope nuclear power plant simulation. Licensed plant operators used the displays in realistic scenarios that either had procedural support or did not have procedural support. All three displays were evaluated for their ability to support operator situation awareness. Results: A significant three-way interaction effect was observed on two independent measures of Situation awareness. For both measures, ecological displays improved situation awareness in scenarios that did not have procedural support, primarily in the detection phases of those scenarios. No other pronounced effects appeared across both measures. Conclusions: The observed improvement was sufficiently large to suggest that EID could improve situation awareness in situations where procedures are unavailable. However, the ED displays did not lead to improved situation awareness in the other conditions of the evaluation, and participants using these displays occasionally underperformed on single measures of situation awareness. This suggests that the approach requires further development, particularly in integrating ED with procedural support. Application: This research has important findings for the ongoing development of the EID approach, the design of industrial operator displays, and design to support situation awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]