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Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

A lot of them have an interesting visual grammar - some of them almost look like subway maps.

For some reason I love trying to work out the communicative intent behind the design of some of these things when I don't know what the system actually does - there's clearly a lot of thought behind the presentation that turns it into an interesting puzzle.

...And then I compare some of that to modern industrial design. Everything must be a touch screen, who cares if the UI makes any sense or the operating context makes demanding both visual and manual attention distracting or dangerous?

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Indeed, one of them is a subway control panel, and another one a railway panel. :) [See http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2 for the links to original image sources.]

I've read that some of these systems were brutal to try to figure out. Not unlike today (or anywhere else) engineers were king and they often made the call on how things worked in ways that you might not do day to day.

Walking across the room to compare two readings both on opposite sides of the room in a myriad of other similar controls and displays was not uncommon.

Granted I would never do that ... /s

The lines link components of the same system in their actual order for example: fuel pump - furnace - gas turbine - generator.

When the space permits layout and iconography is also used to put the various components in more context next to each other often based on things like the layout of what ever they are used to control or monitor. For example if it’s a plant control components will be laid out based on the exact layout / blueprints of the plant if it’s a ship or a train if would be laid out by decks or cars.

This helps people orient themselves and find the exact thing they need based on familiarity with what is being monitored rather than the control room itself.

It not only helps with day to day operations since the the visual association is faster but also allows staff that isn’t familiar with the control room and specialists which may be called in to effectively operate within it.

This isn’t unique to Soviet control rooms this is constantly used in monitoring all over the world across all fields even IT.

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