Ideas For a Great Control Room?

lewko writes "Our company is about to build a central monitoring facility and I'm looking for ideas/suggestions about the best hardware and the best way to make it comfortable for those manning a screen. It will be manned 24x7 and operators will be monitoring a variety of systems including security, network, fire, video and more. These will be observed via local multi-monitor workstations and a common videowall. This is going to be a massively expensive exercise and we only get one chance to get it right. The facility is in a secure windowless bunker and staff will generally be in there for many hours at a time. So we have to implement design elements which make it a 'happy' place. At the same time, it has to be ergonomically sound. Lastly, we will be showing it to our clients, so without undoing the above objectives, it would be nice if it was 'cool' (yet functional). Whilst Television doesn't transfer to real life always, think 'CTU' from 24."

Comments

Re:My favorite NOC

[Kell Bengal]

I'm sure glad they come with a convenient, obvious self-destruct mechanism. No way that could go wrong. No sir.

Re:My control room experience at fermilab

[zippthorne]

GAH, gross.

You need ONE, good sized monitor for your windowing display. Users can task switch and arrange the windows how they want to. Satellite displays are for data that MUST be shown at all times, or that must not be limited by inclusion into the windowing system. They should be basically static in form, and have purpose-built instruments, rather than general-purpose monitors, preferably.

Those top-monitors are useless: while your users are glancing up at them, they're not looking at their screen. With proper window-switching they could've twitched their fingers, rather than craned their necks to get that information.

Monitors that high up really aren't for the use of the people at the station. If you're putting them there, they're for people behind the people at the station. e.g. other workers, supervisors, etc. And should be sized appropriately to be read from the distance they're being used at.

Keep in mind that humans can only read one monitor at a time, anyway. Just because we have a lot of peripheral vision doesn't mean it's useful for *reading* or taking in graphs. You only really need one monitor per set of eyes present.