Gas-flow planning tool

Flow Engineers in the Fluxys central control room perform the complex task of planning and monitoring gas flows through the distribution system in real-time. The human-machine interface (HMI) for the new gas-flow planning tool POLARIS was therefore a major concern.
We have worked closely on the POLARIS project since 2003 as part of an agile development process.

Understand
We observed the daily practice of gas flow planning and studied the highly complex business context. The real-time tasks of the Flow Engineers require constant attention, because critical data is continuously updated by other applications and by human operators.

We facilitated requirement workshops and specified requirements covering business, functional and infrastructure aspects. These were visualised in the form of HMI concepts, use cases and other specification documents. We needed to be highly flexible, because user requirements changed as
market conditions and the tool itself evolved.

Explore
The design of the HMI was integrated with the functional analysis to create explicit links between the two; for example, between the display panels in the HMI and the system operations and security settings identified in the analysis.

Define
We captured all details of the POLARIS HMI in specifications for each module. Individual HMI elements and actions were listed with their respective references to the underlying data model. Separate specifications covered generically applicable HMI patterns, access rights, graphs, behaviour settings and colour settings.

Namahn designed the HMI for an application that retrieves, manages and displays vast amounts of flow planning data from other applications. Using the tool, Flow Engineers at Fluxys can monitor and update gas flow information in real-time without interrupting their workflow.
Fluxys has secured a high acceptance of the product and continues to involve our designers for further iterations as well as for developing new document templates, design and modelling guidelines and training modules to support its IT analysts and developers.