Context Diagram

 

* This context is the Vital Signs monitoring window in EMACS where, as you correctly guessed, clinically essential vital signs are displayed for members of a climbing party. Values in green represent vital signs within range, while values in red represent vital signs out of acceptable range. Additionally, two EKG & RR graphs display EKG & RR values in a graphical format to enhance a climber's clinical diagnosis.

* The focus here was to make sure that a climber could see the right things at the right time. Prototyping and usability testing will almost certainly result in incremental changes to the design, but the basic interaction modalities should pretty much be set at this time because the design tried to keep a high semantic directness for all system goals.The principles of direct manipulation were enforced throughout the design, and the cognitive effort kept to the bare minimum to ensure that even under extreme physiological stress a climbers' goals are always clearly mapped to the relevant system features.

* Interaction Scenarios have been omitted for the obvious reason that system pragmatics are inexistent. The role of the climber in interacting with the device is entirely passive. This of course is a highly desirable feature of the system design: the less interaction the better. A climber under extreme physiological stress should not be expected to interact with the system except in an entirely passive mode.

* The various acronyms used in the context diagram are explained in an external supporting Technical Glossary document.

EMACS Vital Signs Monitoring Window