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It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

washingtonpost.com

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Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#71

Post by BearGoesChirp »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #35
Chaebixi wrote: post #19

There was a very similar incident in 1971 ("code word hatefulness"). Back then, three tapes were kept next to a EBS transmitter, two real alerts and one for testing. One day, an operator accidentally loaded the real alert rather than the correct test alert, and many stations prepared to tell the country the nuclear war was imminent. The fix was to: > …In the past three tapes, one for the test and two for actual emerg…

That's a good example. Shockingly poor foresight. It's similar to the "A gun is always loaded" principle. Unless you can tell at a glance that a firearm is not in a ready-to-fire state, you treat it as if it is. People are clumsy and forgetful, and you only have to mess up once. Leaving the live rounds right next to the blanks, in that way, is pretty indefensible. (Ignoring of course that blanks can still kill, for t…

>Unless you can tell at a glance that a firearm is not in a ready-to-fire state

Chance you are actually able to say that vs. chance you made a mistake in reasoning that conclusion? Still not a bet worth taking.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#72

Post by lutorm »

794CD01 wrote: post #59
bovermyer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's literally the law: > TERRORISTIC THREAT > > (a) A person commits an offense if he threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to: > > 2. place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury;

The intent of most death threats these days, almost certainly including these, is simply to express dissatisfaction, not to "place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury", even if that's how an outside observer unfamiliar with cultural context might interpret it.

That is ridiculous. While it may be done out of dissatisfaction, it is most definitely made for the purpose of "placing the person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury."

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#73

Post by BearGoesChirp »

datpuz wrote: post #11

The UX in most software made for the government is terrible. At the end of the day, I think anyone clicking any button in that list should have been well aware of what those buttons do especially since clicking that button was a routine part of the shift change process in that shop. Bad UX, sure. But that person dun goofed.

People are going to goof at a certain rate. We need to design systems to withstand at least some rate of goofing. We wouldn't get rid of seat belts and just tell people to not goof. Sometimes the goofing is criminally negligent, sometimes it isn't. In this case, I'd say it wasn't.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#74

Post by jack6e »

nsxwolf wrote: post #63

I think this whole thing could be seen as a blessing in disguise, but I don't hear anyone talking about it. We seem totally unprepared for this kind of event. The message said take shelter, so why were people running around screaming and crying in the streets? People were throwing their kids into storm drains. Clever, but what happens to them after that? Where do we go? How long do we have to stay there? Who is going…

Great point. I wonder what Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran think about our reaction, and what ways they see to manipulate it. Most Americans now consider war as "something our all-powerful military does in other places and protects us from worrying about at home." The lack of preparedness you are describing is the result of a mindset that believes any and all attacks will be stopped before reaching the homeland.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#75

Post by jameshart »

everdev wrote: post #12

For all developers asked to design something or not given a design - CSS padding is your friend. Add spacing and then add more. It won't make it a masterpiece but it'll prevent misclicks and make the UI easier to read and understand. Also, use headings like "Amber Alerts", "Weather" and "War". And, use semantic titles like "[TEST] Tsunami" or "ALERT! - Tsunami"

Ah, but then you replace clicking the wrong link due to interface confusion with clicking the wrong link due to flash-of-unstyled-content.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#76

Post by jaclaz »

mannykannot wrote: post #42
getpost wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state sent out a death threat! People are just letting the government know how they feel. The design of this system is grossly negligent, which IS a management problem. It does look like a web page. How is the page served? An internal secure setup on a private network? Is the browser ever updated? Is there javascript? The number of failure modes on this type of setup is unconstrained. How are updates tested? It a…

A warning, whether mistaken or not, is not a death threat, and a death threat is not just a complaint.

>A warning, whether mistaken or not, is not a death threat, and a death threat is not just a complaint.

I don't think there is exactly the same crime in all the states of the US, but there is in some states (as well as in many other countries) the crime of "false public alarm".

Example, you start crying "Fire!" in a crowded cinema or public place:

http://mollolawfirm.com/resources/criminal-law-resources/fal...

P.S.: Meantime in Japan:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/first-hawa...

but this was not the governemnet, it was the NHK and they were very fast to send a correct message.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#77

Post by 2-4-Flinching »

kuschku wrote: post #64
everdev wrote: post #12

For all developers asked to design something or not given a design - CSS padding is your friend. Add spacing and then add more. It won't make it a masterpiece but it'll prevent misclicks and make the UI easier to read and understand. Also, use headings like "Amber Alerts", "Weather" and "War". And, use semantic titles like "[TEST] Tsunami" or "ALERT! - Tsunami"

Also, colors. Make all tests blue, all real alerts red. A tiny and simple change, but makes such a difference. EDIT: I decided to create a mockup with only tiny changes: 1. the current version https://s3.kuschku.de/public/01_current.PNG 2. Color-coding added https://s3.kuschku.de/public/02_colors.PNG - already a significant change, with only one line of CSS 3. Semi-Sorted into groups, and always moved drills to the t…

I will say color makes a bigger impact on people that are not paying attention. I built a batch script to automate a lengthy process we had to do to a few dozen offline computers. I had field techs telling me it ran but didn't work. Found out that they were not reading the output of the command line. It would ask them to run it as Administrator. Quick fix, I made the box background go red and the text yellow when it hit this issue and never had a problem since.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#78

Post by theandrewbailey »

nsxwolf wrote: post #58

Why are we talking about dropdown boxes and modal confirm messages? Shouldn't it be basically impossible for the same system that sends test messages to also send real messages? If it takes two people turning two keys to launch a missile, shouldn't it take the same to send a missile warning?

> If it takes two people turning two keys to launch a missile, shouldn't it take the same to send a missile warning?

Hell no. A missile launch involves a large expenditure of resources, and (sometimes) lots of destruction. A missile warning should not.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#79

Post by GoToRO »

antonkm wrote: post #50
everdev wrote: post #12

For all developers asked to design something or not given a design - CSS padding is your friend. Add spacing and then add more. It won't make it a masterpiece but it'll prevent misclicks and make the UI easier to read and understand. Also, use headings like "Amber Alerts", "Weather" and "War". And, use semantic titles like "[TEST] Tsunami" or "ALERT! - Tsunami"

If a developer were in a position to actually change this, the options should be in separate lists, or even separate pages. If only CSS and HTML is available, they should be in two columns. The screenshots are so bad, not even the juniors I work with would consider deploying this. It's mind boggling.

I wonder how much money they spent for this...

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#80

Post by sokoloff »

jpindar wrote: post #44
derekp7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often times a web page will have buttons that dance around the screen, if the page is still loading elements. That can cause misclicks too.

I hates that so much, especially on mobile sites which load so slowly that a miss click takes ages to recover from.

I don't think this is at all accidental.
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