"Machine, Meet Human: Designing a Useful Interface" is written to help anyone from any background get up to speed with the state of SCADA HMI graphics design and to teach the concepts of the most effective design ideas. The idea of graphic creation covered here is a holistic approach starting with the need. Then it progresses to understanding the aspects of the Machine and the Human; what makes them unique and what makes them similar. Finally we see how we can design with those understandings in mind to leverage existing habits and natural tendencies to create graphics that enhance efficiency and safety by working with the processing of the human component. This is not a "How-To," but rather a "Why-To" for graphics design. It is not intended to build templates or libraries for you. Rather it is intended to enable and empower you to build your own graphics, templates, libraries and palettes on any system platform in any operational environment. If you have human machine interface graphics to design you will want to read this. Whether you're an experienced designer or this is your first project, there is something here for you.