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The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

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Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#91

It's easy to see how this is bad, and I bet dozens of designers are now creating alternatives for their dribble and Twitter appreciation, but the problem is probably what led to this, not this specifically. I can see it: a contractor started with a link that triggers a push notification, then someone requested another link, then another, then it grew from there, never having the ability to stop and rethink this from…

Incremental design doesn’t excuse the guy adding thing #2 or thing #3 not paying attention to the whole. Nor does being a contractor excuse it. You don’t get a contract job to add some links to a page. You are contracted to modify it (regardless of what the buyer said he wanted) - and you are responsible for not making it dangerous. Even if that means you can’t take the job. Someone reviewed the spec for this. Someon…

So many assumptions... first, inject twice as many levels. Then make the output text go through a system which makes it impossible to add any formatting. Add a legacy system and some procurement. Mix well. Oh and the person signing off likely never actually sees the output.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% Agree, there are a million little things that could have been done differently/better. My point really was trying to focus on that the delay in follow-up was completely understandable (also unfortunate) and that there was definitely some low hanging fruit for improvement (your suggestions being chief among them). This is, however, the UI/UX use end up with when you produce a specific spec and farm it out to the…

According to the Twitter thread the option at the bottom of the list (False Alarm) was added as the fix to this problem. Making a reasonable UI was apparently not an option.

Who says it's not an option?

There's likely a CMS of some sort for adding messages, so adding a false alarm one probably just meant someone with admin access just needed to fill out a web form.

UI changes, even simple ones, would take a little longer.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#93

It's easy to see how this is bad, and I bet dozens of designers are now creating alternatives for their dribble and Twitter appreciation, but the problem is probably what led to this, not this specifically. I can see it: a contractor started with a link that triggers a push notification, then someone requested another link, then another, then it grew from there, never having the ability to stop and rethink this from…

Yeah. I spent all of 1.5 months in a government contracting shop. I quit as fast as possible. Until something changes with project management and politics, that's just a space that is unlikely to produce good software.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#94

I think I'm the only person who saw it and thought it was fine. It's a list of clearly labeled text links, very clear very simple. There are some changes that could be made to separate drills/tests from real events (or a different naming convention), but I'm surprised to see many people call a single page text list "terrible UI".

It's all about context. It might be fine if that's a list of your website bookmarks and if you click the wrong one you just click a different one. But when the consequences of clicking the wrong one are such high magnitude, it's bad design.

And I don't even think it's up for debate. If the design of the page just made someone accidentally alert a whole state of an incoming missile, then it's bad.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#95

It's easy to see how this is bad, and I bet dozens of designers are now creating alternatives for their dribble and Twitter appreciation, but the problem is probably what led to this, not this specifically. I can see it: a contractor started with a link that triggers a push notification, then someone requested another link, then another, then it grew from there, never having the ability to stop and rethink this from…

Right... the time and effort to even [sort out the links into TEST and LIVE categories in adjacent boxes] as the minimal disambiguation would likely not be granted because budgets.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#96
post #37

"Days after Hawaii alert gaffe, Japan issues false alarm about a missile launch" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-japan...

Wow, that's a pretty big coincidence. What would be the purpose of both states intentionally setting off false alarms?

>intentionally

No one intentionally set off these alarms.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#97
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>maybe have to type a confirmation string Having to type out YES or some phrase is a fairly common "Are you really sure you want to do this??" sort of thing. I gather they're also looking at requiring a second person's confirmation which, if practical and very unlikely to make it impossible to send any message, seems reasonable as well.

I think I have read some research in healthcare field that such confirmations aren’t s helpful as you would think. One reason of course is a combination of alarm fatigue and the fact that software has trained people to just always click yes when an annoying pop up appears. Another is that people will think the have already clicked the correct thing button. So it’s less “Oh a confirmation box has appeared, let me conf…

Having to type "YES" or "ALERT" would be useless, I agree. But having to type: "SEND A REAL ALERT" or something like that would probably be reasonably useful. The way GitHub prompts me before deleting a repo is a good example of a useful prompt. The text I have to type is the name of the repo being deleted.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#99
post #33

The thing that annoys me most about this situation is people complaining about how long it took to send out the "Sorry, there was no missile" message. Just as I expected these were hard-coded messages that were sent out by a button (link) click and not a free-form text area. There are many (good) reasons you want your program set up this way (let's ignore the rest of the terrible UI/UX for now). It makes complete sen…

>maybe have to type a confirmation string Having to type out YES or some phrase is a fairly common "Are you really sure you want to do this??" sort of thing. I gather they're also looking at requiring a second person's confirmation which, if practical and very unlikely to make it impossible to send any message, seems reasonable as well.

>Having to type out YES or some phrase is a fairly common "Are you really sure you want to do this??" sort of thing.

This should also only be used for the real alerts and not the drills/tests otherwise you're training users to blindly type YES.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#100

The thing that annoys me most about this situation is people complaining about how long it took to send out the "Sorry, there was no missile" message. Just as I expected these were hard-coded messages that were sent out by a button (link) click and not a free-form text area. There are many (good) reasons you want your program set up this way (let's ignore the rest of the terrible UI/UX for now). It makes complete sen…

Good thing NPM was up so they could get a new build out with the all clear message.
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