Update-highlight-acknowledge UI design pattern

Question

I am working on a safety-critical multi-user system where data shown to the operator can be changed by other operators or external systems. These changes need to be highlighted in the UI and then acknowledged by the operator. Anyone aware of existing UI design pattern that captures this need?

Answer 1

I don't think you really need a special design pattern for this - just standard MVP/MVVM kind of stuff, in conjunction with a basic Observer pattern (or events if in C#, or signal/slot, etc...) would probably be sufficient...

Answer 2

Could multiple changes happen (and queue up) before the operator has time to respond?

The boilerplate solution to similar problems is to highlight the element that changed by making it glow, light up, or change to a special color, and only change back to its usual state when the user touches or clicks on the item or an nearby acknowledge button. However this may not be the best angle for you.

It sounds like a constantly visible list of items would be a good solution. That way, the operator can constantly check the list of items and work through them in an orderly fashion if new items appear.

New items could be color coded and decorated with icons to indicate the estimated magnitude of change or impact. List items older than a predefined threshold could blink to catch the operators attention.

Following this route, you could add a history list (below the current items) detailing what happened when. This would allow an operator to go back and check what happened as a reference if they forgot or were distracted.