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USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#151

Post by scott_karana »

lisper wrote: post #106

It's not just boats that have safety-critical UI design problems. The avionics in airplanes are becoming so complicated that managing the avionics is almost more difficult than flying the plane. I'm a private pilot who has been flying a Cirrus SR22 for twelve years. In that time it has gone through two major glass cockpit avionics revisions. In the first revision, called the Avidyne, the autopilot was either on or of…

Air France 477 was caused by UI stupidity, too.

Linked controls (nobody realized the junior copilot was making opposing inputs, which were then averaged with the pilot's) plus poor autopilot UI that they were accustomed to ignoring, made it stall and crash after a single wind speed sensor iced up.

If nobody had touched the controls, autopilot would have flown safely through the storm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#152

Post by Yaggo »

userbinator wrote: post #135
katastic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

Automotive "climate control" has been around since the mid-60s, and the controls of the early versions were also far more straightforward; basically, one knob for temperature and another for turning the system on/off at various settings. Here's one from 1973: http://i44.servimg.com/u/f44/16/54/79/13/1973_c12.jpg

I had no idea that automatic climate control (i.e. user just sets the target temperature) dates back to 1970, because it was not a standard option for low/mid-price cars yet in 90s (at least in Finland). Heck, my parents bought a Toyota Corolla in 2003 with no automatic climate control. Fascinating to see it implemented with old-style analogous controls. Same for 6-way power seat.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#153

Post by diggernet »

ams6110 wrote: post #108
Animats wrote: post #73

There was a ferry accident involving a similar transfer of control problem in New York harbor.[1] Ferries have a lot of maneuvering modes and directional thrusters, because they do so many dockings, and so they have a more complex control problem. The pilot put the system into a backup dumb mode while in cruise, then changed stations to where he could best see the dock while still in the wrong mode. Rammed the dock a…

It makes some sense to me. Conning officer instructs helmsman which direction to go. Helmsman then executes that and monitors/adjusts to stay on that heading without further attention. Same for speed. The officer is then free of the tasks of monitoring and adjusting speed and direction and can focus on what's happening outside of that.

Thank you. That's precisely why things are this way. Source: me, Navy veteran

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#154

Post by diggernet »

okabat wrote: post #109
chrisseaton wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Valve linkages had immediate effect on the output, but you also had to adjust the boiler heat input to keep the temperature within limits. Can you not vent some of the steam, so the same volume of steam is being produced and the temperature the same but only some of it goes to the drive?

I think their point is that when changing engine output is labor-intensive, it made perfect sense to have an officer giving orders and somebody else implementing them. Why the command structure hasn't shifted to accommodate modern technology is an interesting question

It's not labor-intensive, it's attention-intensive. You want the person managing the speed to be focused on that. You want the person managing the heading to be focused on that. And you definitely don't want the officer to be distracted by maintaining course and speed when they need to be keeping track of what's going on around the ship.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#155

Post by katastic »

userbinator wrote: post #135
katastic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

Automotive "climate control" has been around since the mid-60s, and the controls of the early versions were also far more straightforward; basically, one knob for temperature and another for turning the system on/off at various settings. Here's one from 1973: http://i44.servimg.com/u/f44/16/54/79/13/1973_c12.jpg

I know. I'm not saying they invented it. I'm saying that it wasn't a common feature on lower price cars.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#156

Post by [deleted] »

Cyph0n wrote: post #147
dreamcompiler wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

> The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness. If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved…

[deleted]

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#157

Post by katastic »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #142
Cyph0n wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you weren't getting near-instantaneous full HD quality broadcasting with DVR support on your TV back then.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

Mine is almost instantaneous. Except it's a lie because the TV is never actually off. It's "Standby" mode consumes a crap ton of wattage and the manual literally says "unplug it" if you intend to not use it for a long time.

Not to mention the damn spyware that's included with it...

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#158

Post by Yaggo »

Cyph0n wrote: post #147
dreamcompiler wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

> The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness. If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved…

> If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved.

Simple solution: just put 10x decoders/tuners for most recently used channels. I don't think it's really an engineering problem but more about cost-effectiviness, i.e. not enough consumers are willing to pay the premium.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#159

Post by Bromskloss »

diggernet wrote: post #153
ams6110 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes some sense to me. Conning officer instructs helmsman which direction to go. Helmsman then executes that and monitors/adjusts to stay on that heading without further attention. Same for speed. The officer is then free of the tasks of monitoring and adjusting speed and direction and can focus on what's happening outside of that.

Thank you. That's precisely why things are this way. Source: me, Navy veteran

What about the question regarding having one guy doing direction, and another guy doing speed? Is that called for?

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#160

Post by Animats »

maxerickson wrote: post #98
swixmix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have references for the Submarine story? The submarines I've seen have a rudder, stern plane, and another on the sail. With mechanical controls, I imagine it's difficult to have one person control all three of those movements. Two people controlling three movements seems right.

The Albacore museum has a virtual tour, it shows 2 seats: http://www.ussalbacore.org/html/virtual_tour.html http://www.ussalbacore.org/img/img_virtual_tour/32-lg.jpg But it was modified several times, so that doesn't really contradict the story.

See [1], the section on "The Pilot".

Albacore was very maneuverable, probably more so than any large sub before or since. The term "hydrobatics" was used. Probably too maneuverable for a ship of that size, since it wasn't configured for operation with everybody strapped in.

[1] http://www.ussalbacore.org/html/albacore_story.html

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