Understanding Large Display Environments: Contextual Inquiry in a Control Room

Research has identified benefits of large high-resolution displays (LHRDs) for exploring and understanding visual information. However, these displays are still not commonplace in work environments. Control rooms are one of the rare cases where LHRD workplaces are used in practice. To understand the challenges in developing LHRD workplaces, we conducted a contextual inquiry a public transport control room. In this work, we present the physical arrangement of the control room workplaces and describe work routines with a focus on the interaction with visually displayed content. While staff members stated that they would prefer to use even more display space, we identified critical challenges for input on LHRDs and designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for LHRDs.