Welcome to the Process Automation Usability Project-- #PAutoUP

Aug. 6, 2009

We have been working on a Web 2.0 Social Media enabled way for the process automation community to discuss, teach and learn about usability issues in process automation for some time. It is called the Process Automation Usability Project, and you can find it here.

We have been working on a Web 2.0 Social Media enabled way for the process automation community to discuss, teach and learn about usability issues in process automation for some time. It is called the Process Automation Usability Project, and you can find it here.

[img_assist|nid=3064|title=Process Automation Usability Project|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=391|height=320]And here you'll find forums for discussing how to streamline and simplify the application and use of process automation technologies.

For too long, technology in general—and process automation technology in particular—has been difficult to apply, to use, and to maintain. These forums intend to change that by providing a repository for the process automation community's best thinking on usability improvements.

Forums are organized according to Planning, Design, Implementation, Operations, Maintenance, and Security issues. If you have a comment not related to these issues, please visit the Other Topics forum. Use these forums to describe a problem, suggest a solution, or brainstorm the "what ifs?" that could help set a new standard in technology usability.

Sometimes, of course, a picture or video is worth a thousand words. Join our Flickr group or YouTube channel to see, share and comment on images and videos related to the forum topics. Post your favorite pix and videos to share.

If you noticed the funny set of characters in the title of this post, #PAutoUP you may have recognized a Twitter "hash tag." It is a way to tag a tweet so that you can look at all the tweets on a specific subject...and any tweet with that hash tag will wind up on our tweet section, so start tweeting about Process Automation Usability.

We're ready to take the wraps off our baby now, and invite you all to come play. Everyone is welcome to read and post in these forums. To post, however, you must log in to your ControlGlobal.com account. Not a member of ControlGlobal.com yet? Register now to begin posting.

We're grateful to Emerson Process Management for their sponsorship that allowed us to come up with what we think is a revolutionary way to communicate between ourselves about the issues we all face in making our process control and automation systems function as envisioned, as designed, and as installed. Those can be different, as we know well.

So come and try out this microsite, which we believe to be unique in all of automation, and in all of business to business media as well. We are very proud-- but what it will take to keep this going is the contributions of all of us in the community. We hope you like the Process Automation Usability Project as much as we do.

The ControlGlobal.com team