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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

#181

Post by oasisbob »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #176
Yaggo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 recentl…

Exactly. Just having two decoders instead of one would drastically improve the 80% use case of consecutive channel surfing.

Some TVs including Samsungs have dual tuners.

However, even if the read-ahead tuner was perfectly predictive you'd still need to flip through channels fairly slowly, otherwise you'll outrun it - about a second a channel.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#182

Post by dreamcompiler »

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…

Booting a computer doesn't have to be slow, and that's even more true for embedded computers. But making the boot process fast requires very careful engineering, which is both a rare skill and also not very well supported by management for consumer products companies.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#183

Post by oasisbob »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #179
oasisbob wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the MPEG-2 decoder in your TV needs to be fast enough to keep up with the transmitted data rate, but that doesn't mean that it has instantaneous stream startup times. Your TV doesn't have the information it needs to start displaying MPEG-2+ATSC A/53 video for as long as 700ms. It needs to buffer quite a bit of timing information and at least an I-picture frame before it can start displaying anything: http://www.…

And the way to solve this -- at least for the case of consecutive channel surfing -- is to have multiple decoders and multiple buffers. It's simply precaching.

Eventually you're going to run into RF limits, especially if the signal is coming in over the air.

You're sure this is engineering laziness? How much extra would you pay for a TV with faster channel changing?

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#184

Post by btgeekboy »

owlmirror wrote: post #180
lisper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm impressed. But how did you figure all that out in the first place?

RTM and training.

Yep. I did both my primary flight training and instrument rating in a G1000-equipped aircraft so it’s like learning a powerful IDE - just start with the basics and keep adding on.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#185

Post by amluto »

katastic wrote: post #119
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…

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"…

That wasn't particularly early. I learned to drive in a used (but perfectly functioning, of course) '91 Lexus LS400. It was the make or break car for the new Lexus marque, and they put serious effort into the experience.

It has excellent thermostat-controlled AC and heat, and it was very easily controllable using dedicated buttons without looking away from the road at all. I wish modern cars (cough, Tesla) would put a tenth the care into UX.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#186

Post by FabHK »

btgeekboy wrote: post #122
rangibaby wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a purpose to the display being so colorful? If AP were the only green thing and the others were monochrome it would stand out more.

Most of the colors on that display have a rationale. For example, on the speed tape on the left, the white, green, and yellow colors all map to colors of a standard airspeed indicator. That the course (CRS) is green instantly tells me I'm navigating by a ground-based VOR, not GPS (which would be magenta). Same with the green diamond on the right by the altitude indicator. The waypoints at the top are all GPS-calculat…

Do you have any opinion on the G1000 (and subsequent Garmin flight decks) vs competitors, such as Avidyne Entegra?

My feeling has always been that the Garmin UI was somewhat clunky and suboptimal, possibly because they tried to keep it similar to the UI of previous smaller devices (such as the GNS 430); a bit like if the iPhone hadn't come along and we'd still scroll by putting our finger on a little arrow in a scroll bar on mobile devices.

My impression was that other manufacturers had a better UI, but somehow didn't make it in the marketplace.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#187

Post by [deleted] »

btgeekboy wrote: post #122
rangibaby wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a purpose to the display being so colorful? If AP were the only green thing and the others were monochrome it would stand out more.

Most of the colors on that display have a rationale. For example, on the speed tape on the left, the white, green, and yellow colors all map to colors of a standard airspeed indicator. That the course (CRS) is green instantly tells me I'm navigating by a ground-based VOR, not GPS (which would be magenta). Same with the green diamond on the right by the altitude indicator. The waypoints at the top are all GPS-calculat…

[deleted]

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#188

Post by FabHK »

rangibaby wrote: post #112
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…

Is there a purpose to the display being so colorful? If AP were the only green thing and the others were monochrome it would stand out more.

The colours have significance. There's a famous talk by a AA training captain, Capt. Warren VanderBurgh, about the dangers of over reliance on automation, and it's called "Children of the Magenta" (magenta being the colour with which the computer generated navigation guidance is displayed).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#189

Post by FabHK »

rangibaby wrote: post #112
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…

Is there a purpose to the display being so colorful? If AP were the only green thing and the others were monochrome it would stand out more.

While the "AP" indicator is very important, such that overlooking it, or rather missing its absence, could lead to loss of control and death, the same holds for many other of the items displayed.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#190

Post by dx034 »

carterehsmith wrote: post #136
cocoablazing wrote: post #83

A key occurrence during this mishap: 0127 The Officer of the Deck ordered course to the right to course 240T, but rescinded the order within a minute. Instead, the Officer of the Deck ordered an increase to full speed and a rapid turn to the left (port). These orders were not carried out. 0129 The Bosun Mate of the Watch, a more senior supervisor on the bridge, took over the helm and executed the orders. I've witness…

I don't know which one is more bizzare here - the story itself, or the barrage of "this is due to bad UX" comments in this thread. So I guess if this warship fired all its rockets away, "due to bad UX", and destroyed a small nation, I guess the comments would also be about a bad UX. Oh crumbs, the "check status" button was so close to the "start armageddon" button. Perhaps we should submit a meek complaint to Microso…

I think that's the real point. The ship in question is by far not the largest and should be more agile than most ships that go through these waters. How can ferries and tankers easily master this every day and the Navy is not? If they cannot figure out how to solve a situation like this within 2 minutes, how would they react to enemy fire or being attacked by another ship?
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