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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

#161

Post by JdeBP »

jandrese wrote: post #82
JdeBP wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim at https://twitter.com/discreetsecure/status/953226818357727233 is that there already is a confirmation dialogue. It is the same for every option, and it does not mention which option has been chosen.

That's useless then. That's the sort of dialog that trains users to ignore it because it offers no useful information. There's a post just a short distance down that twitter thread to a simple layout change that would have made it difficult to choose the wrong option by simply categorizing the options properly. But I'm betting that list is autogenerated on a hardcoded template from some goddamn database somewhere in…

Yes. Luca Milan's, mentioned here at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16158252 .

Compare M. Milan's design to the mainframe menu screens I have listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16158878 .

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

#163

Post by rmc »

Daycrawler wrote: post #132
sjs382 wrote: post #114

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-opposite-of-fitts-law/ In the cockpit of every jet fighter is a brightly painted lever that, when pulled, fires a small rocket engine underneath the pilot's seat, blowing the pilot, still in his seat, out of the aircraft to parachute safely to earth. Ejector seat levers can only be used once, and their consequences are significant and irreversible. Applications must have ejector seat…

Also jet pilots have years of training whereas users are presented to "intuitive" interfaces where they have no reason not to push every button just to test them out.

I really hope the people who are looking for intercontinental missles have some training.

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

#164

Post by evanwise »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #116
whatever_dude wrote: post #19

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…

I feel like it was absolutely a money issue. In my experience it's a matter of going "well, we'd like to redesign the screen for $x, but we could throw another link on there for a quarter of $x", and the user will always go with the cheaper option. You can't just say "No, we need to go with the more expensive option" because that makes the client unhappy, and we don't want that, and if you only go with the more expen…

To me this kind of thinking from management is, frankly, negligent. If you're working on a simple e-commerce site I suppose it's excusable, because in the end, the customer is going to pay the cost of poor design in lost business and that is their decision. For safety critical systems it is absolutely inexcusable, and the manager responsible should face criminal liability. No one should die because some middle manager was cutting corners to hit his quarterly targets.

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

#165

Post by Zxian »

ghaff wrote: post #33
joshstrange wrote: post #25

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.

When deleting a repository in Gitlab, you are required to type the name of the repository in a field. This forces you to change the response based on the particular action.

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

#166

Post by jdietrich »

itronitron wrote: post #58
whatever_dude wrote: post #19

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…

I think a big problem is that people that don't have a lot of experience with design treat design decisions as subjective and arbitrary when in fact there is a lot of science to back up certain design choices (human vision, cognitive psychology, and not A/B testing.) As a result the approval process for any design, whether the initial or a redesign, gets stuck on the desks of various people that either don't feel qua…

A lot of people that do have a lot of experience with design treat design decisions as subjective and arbitrary. Design is often taught as an arts subject, with woefully little science content. The rise of UX as a distinct discipline reflects this lack of scientific thinking in the mainstream design community.

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

#167

Post by jwmullally »

jwmullally wrote: post #156

Fix proposal subthread. Can we harness HN collective intelligence to vote up some good suggestions? Instructions: * Reply with your suggested fix to this comment. (That way we can vote equally between suggestions, instead of having them being scattered throughout the thread). * First line is simple one-line summary, optionally followed by a blank line then some exposition. Example: ---------- Simple fix: Seperate lin…

Simple fix: Seperate links into 2 color coded sections, TEST and ACTIVE

Put each set of links into seperate divs, with different background colors or striped backgrounds. As is, these different links are mixed up together making them accident prone. Undoubtedly a mini development boondoggle will result over this incident, in the meantime the above fix is easy and satisifies the real requirement.

Already suggested here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16158252

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

#168

Post by selectodude »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #147
joshstrange wrote: post #25

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…

Someone posted a screenshot of a different EAS alert interface on twitter: https://twitter.com/supersat/status/952612571122630659 It has a similar list of alert "templates" as this one, but in addition it has a confirmation box with a radio button "send TEST only / SEND EAS LIVE ", and if you select the "send live" option you must enter an authorization code. It would be interesting to see what the rest of the user i…

The use of Windows XP is a nice touch.

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

#169

Post by sydd »

zimpenfish wrote: post #113
pc86 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a government contractor who did not work on this, I can say I'd bet a lot of money that this is how this screen came about. Initially launched 2-10 years ago with 1-2 links, fast forward a bit and we have this. I can hear a forward thinking developer saying "hey should we at least have colored buttons or something on this screen so it's easy to see what is a test and what is not?" and the product owner/business ow…

> a forward thinking developer saying "hey should we at least have colored buttons Accessibility becomes an issue for colourblind people then.

I am not an expert, but you should not hire colorblind people to operate a nuclear warning system.
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