Abstract：The design of human-machine interfaces is viewed under a human-centred and integrated automation approach。 Functionalities of the interfaces are explained with respect to goals, means, tasks, dialogue, presentation, and error tolerance。 The dialogue functionality is described in more detail with several paradigms。 The design process itself is considered as a problem-  solving activity。 Knowledge-based support for the interface designer is outlined。 It contains knowledge about goals, the application domain, human operators, tasks, and human-machine interface ergonomics (with the availability of graphical and dialogue editors), as well as design procedures。81181

KeyWords: Human-machine systems   human-machine interfaces; knowledge-based systems  designer support  cognitive systems  integrated automation  human-centred design  ergonomics  process control

1。 INTRODUCTION

The design of human-machine interfaces for dynamic technical systems has become quite complicated and can no longer  be  handled  in  an intuitive 

fashion。 The designer needs to possess a huge amount of multidisciplinary knowledge and experience with respect to the application domain of the respective technical process, the available automation and information technologies, the capabilities and limitations of the human operators and maintenance personnel, work psychological and organisational matter as well as ergonomic and cognitive engineering principles of good human-machine interface design。 Human-centred and integrated automation approaches were suggested for dealing with such multi-faceted issues in the analysis, the design and the evaluation of human-machine systems in an effective and systematic way (see, e。 g。, (Rouse, 1991; Johannsen, 1991, 1993))。

The integrated automation approach for dynamic technical systems considers two kinds of integration。 The first is concerned with the integration between traditional numerical supervision and control systems and more recent symbolic knowledge-based decision support systems (DSS) in。 advanced automation modules of the technical systems。 The second kind of integration refers to the human-centred towards automation, namely the integration between the advanced automated technical systmn and the human operators who are the finaIly responsible supervisors of the whole human-machine system。 Both aspects of the integrated automation approach need to be reflected in the design of the human-machine interface between one or several human operators and the advanced automated technical system。 The human operators have to interact in a flexible manner with all the modules of the technical system (i。 e。, the technical process, its supervision and control systems, and the knowledgebased decision support systems, namely application and operator-model based decision support systems); see Fig。 1。 This flexible interaction needs to be performed under all normal and abnormal! operational conditions。 A high degree of transparency is required in order to allow the human operators to understand the system' states and information flows as well as to supervise and to control the whole system successfully under all circumstances。

An appropriate structure of human-machine interfaces for integrated automated systems distinguishes between the presentation level and the dialogue level (Alty and Johannsen, 1989; Johannsen, 1992); see Fig。 1。 The dialogue level deals with the information flows regarding such problems as what information to handle when。 The presentation level is concerned with the problems of how to present the information to the human operators, and how to transform their control inputs。 Although a lot of research is currently being undertaken in the area of multimedia interfaces, the main mode of presentation is still the visualisation。 In this paper, only the presentation mode of visualisation 。