Three Mile Island, 1979. Operators staring at dozens of conflicting alarms, ambiguous instrumentation, and no clear read on what the reactor was actually doing. By the time anyone diagnosed the real problem, the plant was already partway into a partial meltdown. The technology hadn't failed; the room had. Operators simply couldn't extract the right information fast enough from an environment that was fighting them the entire time.
That nuclear incident was almost 50 years ago; the essence of the lesson has not changed, though. The layout of a control room is not a furniture or cosmetics issue; it is, in fact, an operational decision of great importance. A wrong choice, and it is not only will the physical well-being of operators be compromised, but you will also have, in fact, set the stage for the errors that will happen at the worst moments.