Feel The Water: Expressing Physicality Of District Heating Processes In Functional Overview Displays

This paper describes an explorative design study conducted in the scope of a collaborative research project in the district heating domain. In the scope of the project, we have arranged extensive field studies at two power plants to understand the workflows, problems, and needs of industrial operators. We relied on the gained knowledge to design and develop novel visual interfaces that would communicate the overall status of the district heating system at-a-glance. We aimed at exploring potential directions and alternatives beyond conventional industrial interfaces. One particular aspect of our research was related to how the physicality of the underlying industrial processes can be expressed by purely visual means. The paper introduces three high-fidelity prototypes demonstrating the novel visualizations developed. The paper explains the design choices made, namely the relation between the selected visual encodings to the requirements of the industrial operators' tasks. Preliminary evaluation indicates industrial operators' interest in the designed solutions. Future work will incorporate an extensive qualitative evaluation on site.