The report also considers why the crew may have missed or misinterpreted a number of signals that a kick was occurring, and goes on to observe that:
These individuals sit for 12 hours at a time in front of these displays. In light of the potential consequences, it is no longer acceptable to rely on a system that requires the right person to be looking at the right data at the right time, and then to understand its significance in spite of simultaneous activities and other monitoring responsibilities.
Ref. [10], p.121
The President’s Report acknowledges that the Commission did not know precisely what displays were being used to monitor for a kick or what the various operators were doing immediately before the incident. However, the observation of the demands on the operator and the discussion of the limitations of the display design are consistent with a large body of fundamental and applied research as well as technology development. In applications including aviation, nuclear power as well as refining and manufacturing in the oil and gas and chemicals industry5 advanced display design concepts are being used to move away from simply providing operators with data, and towards what are referred to as “perceptual objects.” These are graphical objects, at appropriate levels of detail, designed to integrate a large amount of data into a single visual image that can be easily processed and understood by the human brain. For example, as well as indicating the current status of whatever object or activity is represented, well-designed perceptual objects can quickly and efficiently convey information about the direction and rate of change, as well as important decision points: how close a parameter is to a limit; how soon it will reach a limit; or and whether there has been any significant change.6
The President’s Commission into Deepwater Horizon commented that:
There is no apparent reason why more sophisticated, automated alarms and algorithms cannot be built into the display system to alert the driller and mudlogger when anomalies arise.
Ref. [10], p. 121
Although providing alarms is an obvious and intuitively attractive means of drawing an operator’s attention to a critical change, there are also risks associated with simply adding additional alarms. Sophisticated approaches based on the design of perceptually based displays to support activities that rely on humans monitoring critical systems in real time offer an alternative, more human-centered approach. There can, however, be significant resistance from operators if the change process to introduce such advanced display concepts to established facilities and operations is not managed properly. However, there is now good evidence that these advanced displays can be powerful in helping operators maintain high levels of situational awareness, as well as to be able to detect and diagnose potential problems much more quickly and more reliably than with traditional displays.7 That is, they can make d′ much bigger making what are otherwise “weak” signals, strong.