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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

#251

Post by jdmichal »

usrusr wrote: post #242
jdmichal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government standards never allow only color distinction. There always must be an additional factor than just color. For instance, here's some icons from NATO, which used to be MIL-STD-2525. You'll notice that all the icons differentiate in both color and form. The NTDS standards for Naval systems are similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Joint_Military_Symbology#...

Well, in addition to the color coding I suppose the text would still be different? To me, the screenshot looks more like a list of user-defined presets than something that went through the original software development process. Maybe something along the lines of only superuser can define new presets, but lower users can activate them. That way, at least random "I love you honeybunny" pranks would be avoided, but the…

I did think of the covered switches that are common in movies. I think the equivalent in software are confirmation dialogs, but those are not as effective as the physical counterparts due to click-through-itis disease. [0] This could actually be one of those types of things that might benefit from a different presentation, such as a silly skeumorphic design involving a graphical cover.

[0] Which, to be fair to users, is a disease introduced by putting too many switches under covers which shouldn't be.

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

#252

Post by fencepost »

Omnius wrote: post #198
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…

They could have just an a confirmation window with the the text that was about to be sent. "Everyone is going to die. Run but it won't help"... Is that want you wanted to send [Yes] [No]

If that confirmation window is on every message drill or not, then it would be completely useless. Users have been trained to click past/ignore pop-ups.

I say this as someone who watches people log in on PCs and click past a useless (for them) Citrix dialog that includes a "stop asking" checkbox. Citrix added that checkbox some time ago, so these folks have been vacuously ignoring the entire thing at least once per business day for at least a year.

Perhaps a captcha style prompt could be added (basic math with random values?) to critical/damaging operations but I'm sure that would get pushback of its own.

"You can't require that our people do basic arithmetic when they need to send an alert! It'll slow them down!" Suggested response: "Are you telling me that you're allowing this kind of operation to be done by people who can't handle single digit arithmetic?"

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

#253

Post by sizzle »

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…

This is the same conclusion I draw from being in the trenches of financial services (fintech) shudders

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

#254

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

whatever_dude wrote: post #228
robotsonic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the 'it costs too much' excuse. How much does it cost to go: Testing ... FOR REAL ... It's not perfect, but at least the test alerts and the real alerts are not mixed together.

I bet the naming of each link was approved by a 16-people committee over a 4-week process, each bikeshedding it their own way and forgetting about the actual context of it. Then adding one new link with any reasonable categorization might mean changing the label on a separate link to make it more distinct, and no one wants to go there anymore.

"Should 'FOR REAL' be all in capitals? Bold? Or maybe a different font? I know! We can find a proprietary font that's 99.9% like Arial, but we'll need to throw in specific rules to who can use it and how..."

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

#255

Post by avenoir »

This is just my observation, but this is what you get when software is used in such critical situations and yet the entire software engineering/development field is completely non-standardized and practically the wild west. Again, this is my opinion, which I know a lot of people disagree with, but we're going to keep coming up against this kind of stuff until software developers become licensed and accountable for their designs.

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

#256

Post by thehardsphere »

alkonaut wrote: post #73
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…

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…

I think you and other commentors are being generous in assuming there was a spec to review and that the work was done by a contractor.

I've seen lots of organizations try to save a buck by extending a previously existing system with in-house labor after the original contractor asked for more money to do the change. I would bet that the original contractor (if they're still involved with the project) hasn’t seen that screen because it's some homebrew patch put in by whichever administrator babysits the machines for the state government.

The problem with organizations maintaining their own rogue patches is that, if those organizations had people compentent enough to make changes well, they wouldn't have hired a contractor or bought off the shelf in the first place.

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

#257

Post by nulagrithom »

noir_lord wrote: post #203
crispyambulance wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like quite a normal UI from an "internal" government or enterprise application point of view. In this case, the citizens of Hawaii paid for the bad system design with 48 minutes of existential horror. But these kinds of mistakes happens ALL THE TIME with "enterprise applications." Oracle has similar horrendous UX for their EBS (Enterprise Business Suite), so does SAP, Siemens, etc. People regularly make cost…

> People regularly make costly mistakes in shipping and receiving, purchasing and manufacturing because they have to deal with shitty confusing applications that look just like that screenshot. Currently unscrewing one of those as my day job. "Delete all production orders for period" - no confirmation, no ability to rollback (beyond me restoring from a backup) that kind of thing. It's not that it isn't user friendly,…

> "Delete all production orders for period"

Hah! I built one of those once! The (very abbreviated) conversation went something like this:

"I need a way to bulk delete orders."

"Umm... Are you sure? I can't think of a good reason to delete a bunch of orders in production."

"Yes. We absolutely need this."

"Ok..."

A short time later

"Why does it ask me to confirm? Just make it do it."

"Sure..."

A week later, after restoring from backup

"Remove the bulk delete function. I don't know why we even have that!"

Really demanding managers refuse to explain their XY problems... This one never did learn.

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

#258

Post by cema »

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…

"Good enough for government work". The lowest bidder, etc.

I have seen a large number of government web sites, and most of them, especially at the state level (I am talking about US states), have a horrible UX.

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

#259

Post by Someone1234 »

fencepost wrote: post #252
Omnius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have just an a confirmation window with the the text that was about to be sent. "Everyone is going to die. Run but it won't help"... Is that want you wanted to send [Yes] [No]

If that confirmation window is on every message drill or not, then it would be completely useless. Users have been trained to click past/ignore pop-ups. I say this as someone who watches people log in on PCs and click past a useless (for them) Citrix dialog that includes a "stop asking" checkbox. Citrix added that checkbox some time ago, so these folks have been vacuously ignoring the entire thing at least once per b…

Dialog blindness is very real and problematic.

They could consider a different UI response between a drill and active alert. Since drills are the majority of their workload they'd get dialog blindness to the drill confirmation, and then you'd design the active alert confirmation to be a-typical of the drill (for example a different color dialog, and have an "I agree" checkbox on the active, but none of the drill).

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