ISA CTEEP is the largest electric energy transmitter in Brazil, being responsible for 94% of the energy transmission to the state of São Paulo and about 33% to the entire country. The multinational is an important representative of the ISA Intercolombia Group in Brazilian soil and has operations in 17 states throughout the country.
The Real Time Operations department is the real heart of the company: it is where the power grid maneuvers are carried out and any failure in these operations carry a high degree of risk and consequence to the system, with the weight of potentially impacting hospitals, transportation systems such as the subway, power plants, industries and even entire cities.
The work of the Real Time Operations department is concentrated in the COT – Transmission Operation Center, a room where operators work 24/7 controlling emergencies and routine maneuvers, to ensure system stability and security and avoid consequences of adverse situations such as fires, electrical blackouts and major shutdowns.
In partnership with ANEEL (Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica), ISA CTEEP and ONS (National Electric System Operator), CESAR developed a solution that would make the work of these operators not only functional, but also intuitive and less stressful.
These partners saw a way to enhance the advances in Operations with Design, by providing excellent usability to the support tool, possibly one of the most innovative in terms of high performance and design of Human-Machine Interactions (HMIs) in the Brazilian power industry.
Designing the Future of Operations 4.0: How did Design plan high performance HMIs and usability combining AI requirements to support Real-Time decision making?
Inside the real-time control room, decisions need to be made quickly at all times. Each action needs to involve very careful analyses and insights from the operators, considering the high degree of risk and impact that human error could cause. All of this contributes to a very tense and stressful environment.
The operators, who are the main decision makers, are faced with all of this complexity and need to be increasingly agile and analytical, while maintaining a situational awareness to ensure assertive and safe decisions.
In this context, CESAR used Design concepts to create high-performance human-machine interfaces (HMIs) for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution to support greater situational awareness in decision making in Operation Centers around the country.
Our approach
The research that guided the work was conducted by the Design Thinking process carried out by our team over 11 weeks following the steps below.
Designers-researchers immersed themselves in the ISA-CTEEP COT to deepen their understanding about Real-Time Operations, user levels and their implicit knowledge that infer in the decisions made and the technologies that are used.
After this period, using UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) techniques, together with the use of agile methodologies, the requirements of the solution were defined, so as to prioritize Artificial Intelligence resources in HMIs.
The innovative character of the HMI creations was also considered in the co-creation processes with managers, developers and real-time engineers, so that the Design team could develop highly user-friendly interfaces.
The development of HMIs was modulated on two main fronts: the support system, used on operators’ desks through six screens and placed on islands in the room, and the Videowall, a large panel made up of 14 screens centrally fixed in front of the operator desks.
Development stages
Identification
- Ecosystem Mapping and Alignment with stakeholders
- Activity-Decision Matrix with users
- Ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews
- Opportunity Mapping
- System inventory and survey of HMIs (Human-Machine Interfaces)
Maximization
- Benchmarks and Trend Analysis
- Co-creation with developers and users
- Technical validations
Realization
- User stories
- Prototypes
- Visual identity and visual guide
- Usability tests with end users (ISA CTEEP and ONS)
- Interface, ergonomics and visualization tests
- Final interface
The focus for the interactions was to display the most relevant information first and contextualize scenarios for users to have a situational overview and easily prioritize tasks.
Human-machine interfaces also needed to present operators with trend indicators to forecast and project actions through Artificial Intelligence (AI), which was being developed in parallel by another partner.
Impacts and results
High performance HMIs and the first dynamic Videowall of the Brazilian power grid
The electricity sector is huge and complex. Due to its industrial history, it is often a forgotten scenario when we think about Innovation, which made this mission even more challenging and multidisciplinary.
The IACOT application is a pioneer in the Brazilian energy sector and consists of two integrated fronts: the Support System, with a modular architecture, as a “lego-type” interface, and the Videowall, with dynamic data displays and interfaces.