Sometimes I wonder if filmmakers have the right of it. They need to show what's going on in the computer to a distracted audience in a heartbeat. When they pull that off on screen, I wonder if us software devs should be taking notes.

Isn't that what dashboards are for? They may not look like simplistic LEDs, but being able to "see" what the automation is doing is something everyone that's ever made automation wants to do. It starts with making logs before migrating to live dashboards.

I can't recall where I saw it, there's at least one company working on this issue specifically for nursing staff. Everything beeps in hospitals, but there's no rhyme or reason to it, so room call responses are delayed, serious alarms can be missed, etc.

IIRC, the company's idea is to create a harmonious sound bed when everything's fine, and make different kinds of "out of the norm" alerts use a variety of sounds so that nursing staff get more info about what's wrong before finding the thing thats sounding an alert and looking at its screen.

A guy I went to high school with used to do that for a living. I have no idea what they call it, but it's basically theatrical UI, where the screen has to act and usually deliver a bunch of exposition.