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An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

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Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#81

Post by digi_owl »

js2 wrote: post #21

The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times. Everyone present ignored it. Probably not: In an article in Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche noted that once the angle of attack was so extreme, the system rejected the data as invalid and temporarily stopped the stall warnin…

> the system rejected the data as invalid

Thats like suddenly having your car freeze the speed gauge or something because the speed would be absurd. Who the flip comes up with this things?!

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#82

Post by digi_owl »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #61
raamdev wrote: post #18

I discovered when I was in my late teens that given a week or two of the same daily alarm, my subconscious would eventually recognize the sound as my alarm and I'd get up, walk across the room, turn it off, go back to sleep and wake up an hour or two later with absolutely no recollection of turning it off. I eventually discovered that using my phone as an alarm, with my call ringtone as the alarm sound, was the only…

I've had trouble getting up and staying awake forever. I was terrible in my teens, my parents would actually throw water on me some mornings. Now I use an alarm app (Sleep As Android, I'm sure there are others) that can choose different puzzles and difficulties. To turn off the alarm, I'd have to solve 3 problems like "2x5+14-6" without getting any wrong. I eventually got really good at doing math in my sleep apparen…

Heh, had a similar experience with an alarm clock with a button i needed to twist to lock in place.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#83

Post by digi_owl »

dmckeon wrote: post #28

A environment of multiple, repeating alarms - whether "Stall!" in a cockpit every 3 seconds, or a hospital room with multiple beeps, with only 8 of 1455 especially significant, sounds to me to be like being a programmer trying to fix a critical problem with a PHB manager hovering at one's shoulder, barking "Another server crashed" and "Have you fixed it yet?" and similar several times a minute. Perhaps such environme…

I do believe cockpits have a "master alarm off" button, that will shut it up until something new happens (or the problem state persists long enough).

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#84

Post by bradknowles »

Something I discovered years ago is that there are whole libraries of alarm sounds. And companies like Apple have licensed many of the best known.

The problem occurs when you choose a phone alarm sound that is frequently used in the industry for seriously nasty things. Like frequently used in many movies for the biggest disaster that will be occurring, leaving you in a panic to turn off the sound on your phone right in the middle of the most important part of the movie.

Or, you work in the central IT Services department of a major university, and you work in the building where the main computer room is located. And your alarm sound happens to be the same one as used on the floor for the halon dump fire suppression system. And you're standing at the doorway of a co-worker talking to them, when your phone alarm goes off. And their office happens to be right next to that of the datacenter manager.

So far as I know, there were no heart attacks or strokes that resulted from my accidental use of the same alarm library sound that day. But I was strongly incentivized to switch my alarm sound to something else.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#85

Post by gaur »

dmckeon wrote: post #28

A environment of multiple, repeating alarms - whether "Stall!" in a cockpit every 3 seconds, or a hospital room with multiple beeps, with only 8 of 1455 especially significant, sounds to me to be like being a programmer trying to fix a critical problem with a PHB manager hovering at one's shoulder, barking "Another server crashed" and "Have you fixed it yet?" and similar several times a minute. Perhaps such environme…

> with only 8 of 1455 especially significant

This. It doesn't matter how clever you make the alarm. If it mostly goes off in the absence of real danger, you are teaching people to ignore it.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#86

Post by throwanem »

Fargren wrote: post #52
throwanem wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point. I tend to dawdle in the morning a bit as well, but haven't really put a lot of thought into adjusting that.

My answer to dawdling has become to wake up an hour earlier, at the cost of going to bed earlier. I like my lazy mornings.

I get up at 5:30, which is already pretty early by anyone's lights except maybe my mom, who's usually up by three. Certainly it's unusual in our profession! I've long since grown accustomed to being the first of my team to arrive at the office.

The real problem for me is wintertime, because then I have to wake up in the dark. That just makes it super hard to get going in the morning.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#87

Post by slededit »

digi_owl wrote: post #81
js2 wrote: post #21

The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times. Everyone present ignored it. Probably not: In an article in Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche noted that once the angle of attack was so extreme, the system rejected the data as invalid and temporarily stopped the stall warnin…

> the system rejected the data as invalid Thats like suddenly having your car freeze the speed gauge or something because the speed would be absurd. Who the flip comes up with this things?!

You need to balance this with the ability to detect malfunctioning sensors. Its not so trivial with that requirement.
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