A Comprehensive Evaluation Method of Human-Machine Interface for Indicator-Meters Based on Gray Theory

Meters, especially indicator-meters are the most widely used visual displaying unit of all displaying devices in nuclear power plant. The quality of human-machine interface (HMI) of Meters directly affects the efficiency of human-machine interaction and the performance of the Human-Machine system. Therefore, it is significant to study an appropriate design evaluation technology for indicator-meters. In this study, the authors propose a “qualitative-to-quantitative” comprehensive evaluation method based on the gray relation analysis which could be used for estimating whether the designed HMI system could accord with the desires of users by analyzing the relation degree of factors of a HMI system using the similarities between the evaluation criterion curve and the design scheme curve. Based on the proposed method, a subjective evaluation system of indicator-meter has been developed and an experiment was carried out for evaluating the performance of the HMI system. This paper firstly gives a brief introduction of gray relation analysis and then presents the key evaluation indexes of indicator-meters. Finally, the application of proposed method is illustrated by an example of indicator-meter evaluation. The experiment results show that the proposed method is suitable to the comprehensive design evaluation of the HMI system characterized by multi-factor interactions, unknown and uncertain information included.