Tasks, Trends, Typefaces: A Cross-Domain Comparison of Guidelines for Information Visualization in Control Rooms

The appropriate visualization of a variety of different information is generally of fundamental importance in control rooms. However, looking at different domains (e.g. aviation, power plants, infrastructure), the question arises as to whether there are cross-domain recommendations in view of workplaces that differ with respect to size, resources and workflows. This paper aims to provide a synoptic view of the existing recommendations that were considered in the design of human-centered control rooms in different domains of use. A review of the literature of scientific publications resulted in a list of 14 cross-domain guidelines that are relevant in aviation control, power plant control, and infrastructure control. The guidelines represent a foundation for usable information visualization in safety-critical domains open for expansion and development of domain-specific solutions.