Designing Your Control System — Start with the User Experience
Tips for System Design Success
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How to make sure you get the best control and automation system for your needs.
By Steve Greenblatt

August 16, 2012

Sometimes, in our industry, the work is done backwards. More often than not, an AV system is specified, designed and sold without a clear understanding of its range of use or a specific definition of its functionality requirements. Important services are often left off the bid package. In fact, low project bidders often win jobs by shaving programming costs off the budget. In such cases, the old saying rings true: you get what you pay for.

The Biggest Variable Needs Attention from the Start

Control programming is the biggest variable in a system though it typically gets the least amount of attention upfront. For example, understanding who is going to use the system will help shape the programming. The ability to identify users and the fundamental difficulty of defining such intangible elements of a project add to these constraints.

All of this amounts to unpredictable results after installation, and a lack of planning and definition of the user experience can derail a project.

This is a case of the tail wagging the dog so why don’t we look at projects differently?

Typically, a project or system is defined by a set of user needs:

  • Type of room: boardroom, conference room, lecture hall, auditorium, multi-purpose room
  • Size: number of seats, number of microphones, viewing angles
  • Content: video images, computer images, resolution, audio
  • Quantity of displayed images: single, dual, triple
  • Number and location of auxiliary inputs
  • Conferencing: audio conference, video conference, both
  • Recording: audio, video

The next step is to design a system and select devices that meet these parameters and fit the budget.

These details provide the architecture of a system that represents and responds to your needs.  However, if we stop here (as is too often the case), we miss the critical part of defining the user experience.

Alternatively, an approach that I have found valuable with my clients is to assess the functionality requirements and articulate the user interface experience before designing the


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Designing Your Control System — Start with the User Experience

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Comments
Posted by Jim  on  08/29  at  12:36 PM
The main focus of the user interface must be just that, to interface with the user. No customer cares what gear is hidden in their closet. The end user will usually only see and touch the control system when using a room. This reality makes the user interface and programming the single most important consideration in system design, that's truly what the customer thinks they're buying. My biggest pet peeve is seeing a customer suffer through using a system that requires an 11 step manual process to operate. We've all seen it before. The touchscreen turns on the projector, but there are power steppers and signal patches that someone needs to set manually before anything will work. It's usually documented in a top secret binder that only the receptionist possesses and no one else can find when it's time to start a meeting.... Too many programmers think of a control processor and a touchscreen as separate animals with independent design constraints. The most important thing that the processor must do is seamlessly facilitate the user interface. I highly recommend the philosophies documented in InfoComm's "Dashboard" standards. The user of an AV system should be able to walk into any room and operate it without a question, just like getting into a friend's car and being able to drive it. If systems are more complex and less intuitive than that, I think we've failed as programmers.
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