# Design and Applications of GLANCE: GLanceable Alarm Notification for a User Centered Experience
## 3 Results of the 1 st Macro-Phase: The GLANCE Project
### Second Iteration: Dealing with Multiple Alarms
#### 3.2.1 Definition of an Abstract Model for Notification/Overview of Multiple Active Faults  
The main objective of this stage was the enrichment of the basic model with an overview capability of supporting the final users in the cognitive task of building a mental map of the network status without having to interact with the device for querying the system: The basic idea behind GLANCE is in fact that _network overview_ and _information on individual alarms_ have to coexist and continuously inform users without requesting any action from them.  
As observed in Section 2.1, the problem is to conceive a glanceable synthesis of simultaneously active alarms (i.e., alarms which have not yet been taken in charge by some operators), possibly prioritizing alarms with higher severity. In TLC networks, multiple active faults may be generated within a single NE, within distinct NEs, or in a hybrid situation. To adapt the display to manage these cases yet retain the information expressiveness of the one-notification-at-the-time perspective, _we assigned to the synthetic component the role of glanceable overview of the overall situation, to provide quick and easy comprehension of the number of alarms, their severity, and their sources_ (same NE, distinct NEs,or both). The detailed component maintains its role of container for alarm descriptions, but it is used differently depending on whether the simultaneous alarms are originating in the same NE or in distinct NEs:  
* Case 1 (intra-NE): _Simultaneous faults in the same NE_ (Figure 6a illustrates an example for the specific problem situation): In this case the synthetic component is split into as many portions as the number of simultaneous alarms, each showing the severity of the associated alarm, ordered by severity level. The detailed component shows the alarm with the highest severity level, representing less critical ones as annotated flags;
* Case 2 (inter-NE): _Simultaneous faults in distinct NEs_: In this case the synthetic component is divided into as many portions as the number of NEs generating the faults, with each portion showing in turn the severity of the associated alarm, ordered by severity level. The detailed component cyclically visualizes the descriptions of the incoming alarms one after the other, as a customary sequence of alerts ordered by criticalness (Figure 6b illustrates an example for the specific problem situation, showing a sequence of two active alarms originating in two distinct NEs), in other words, the notifier continuously cycles over alarmed NEs;
* Case 3: _Hybrid situations_: In this case the approaches utilized for facing Case 1 and Case 2 are combined, with the synthetic component split into as many portions as the number of NEs generating the faults, like in Case 2. Each NE is assigned the same area but this area is further partitioned when the NE generates more than one fault (consistently with Case 1). As in Case 2, the detailed component visualizes alarm descriptions as a sequence of alerts, continuously cycling over alarmed NEs (for multiple faults coming from the same NE, only the most severe one is displayed, consistently with rules for Case 1).