The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by jtolmar » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #291

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…

Still, it would be a fun exercise to imagine how e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft or Apple would have designed this screen :)

Google, Apple, and Twitter have hidden the actual launch alert behind three layers of sub menus. Facebook has three layers of sub menus too, but that's the drill and the actual launch is on the front page. Microsoft just has one of these buttons; what's hidden behind the three layers of sub menus is the toggle for whether it's a drill.

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

#332

Post by twocenter » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #271

nulagrithom wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 resto…

My boss is both understanding and willing to listen, after working with him for 6mths I really can't blame the system on him. The out sourced developers however...very much yes I can. Half the things do the wrong thing wrong, the other half is the wrong thing sorta working. There was clearly no attempt to understand what the user wanted or any attempt to ask the simple questions like "Why do you want X, is X related…

> There was clearly no attempt to understand what the user wanted or any attempt to ask the simple questions like "Why do you want X, is X related to Y, would it be handy to pull in related Y for display X"

Asking those questions is being obstructionist. Most end users don't understand the ramifications of what they are requesting. Explaining it all is an effort to bring them up to a level of education that would allow them to do your job. They pay _you_ to do your job and now you are just wasting everybody's time. Why do you have to make everything so complicated!? Why can't you just do what your told? Just add the button and stop asking questions!

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

#333

Post by mulmen » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #239

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that there may have been a real attack but it's being kept quiet (by idk, the Deep State, lizard people, round-earth conspiracists, etc?)

Not at all, and I take offense to what you are suggesting - that anyone who questions the 'official' story automatically believes in lizard people or whatnot. I find it sad that people have been conditioned to lump anyone who questions such a messed up narrative in with nonsense like that. Let's not act as if we've never been lied to before. We have reached a very low point in both credibility and transparency, and j…

You offer no reason to doubt the official story though. If you don't present us with new information you're either pointing out the obvious or advocating nonsense.

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

#334

Post by nvader » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:08 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #302

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…

Somewhat controversially, I wonder if that existential horror was really so bad. I can think of worse ways to spend 48 minutes that contemplating the reality of your mortality, the fact that you could very well be dead at any moment with no warning whatsoever. It makes you re-evaluate your priorities, maybe makes you stop putting off the life changes you were thinking about that seemed like they could wait until next…

This is an un-empathetic thing to say, because you're ignoring the real emotional experiences of the people who lived through this. The terror experienced by people, especially but not limited to those with predisposition to anxiety, hypertension, panic attacks or suicidal thoughts, will have a real impact on their lives.

Or imagine someone who, convinced of an impending death, donates all of their saved wealth to charities online.

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

#335

Post by scoggs » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #271

nulagrithom wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 resto…

My boss is both understanding and willing to listen, after working with him for 6mths I really can't blame the system on him. The out sourced developers however...very much yes I can. Half the things do the wrong thing wrong, the other half is the wrong thing sorta working. There was clearly no attempt to understand what the user wanted or any attempt to ask the simple questions like "Why do you want X, is X related…

It's so painful running into brick wall after brick wall of asking "Why do you want X and have you thought of the implications for Y, Z, and A-W?!", only to be met with sighs and eye rolls that we should just know and get it done. Blah. Bad day for me, I guess? I apologize.

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

#336

Post by amelius » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

jtolmar wrote: post #331

amelius wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it would be a fun exercise to imagine how e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft or Apple would have designed this screen :)

Google, Apple, and Twitter have hidden the actual launch alert behind three layers of sub menus. Facebook has three layers of sub menus too, but that's the drill and the actual launch is on the front page. Microsoft just has one of these buttons; what's hidden behind the three layers of sub menus is the toggle for whether it's a drill.

Microsoft has hidden the drill behind the launch button.

Facebook has a dozen of fake drill buttons, and one real drill button, but you can't tell which is which.

Apple has a launch button but it doesn't work because the missiles are of a different brand.

Google's drill button turns out to be an ad.

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

#337

Post by ClassyJacket » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #154

pc86 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Colorblind doesn't mean "everything is grey" it means you have trouble distinguishing between between a few, usually fairly specific colors. There are plenty of color schemes out that that are perfectly fine for colorblind folks, especially when you only need 2-3 distinct colors.

Nope. Dichromatic color deficiency is the most common form of color blindness, but about one in 20,000 people are completely unable to perceive color due to a variety of ophthalmic and neurological deficits. Even among dichromats, you can only reliably expect all users to be able to distinguish red and blue. It's probably not worth worrying about too much in most circumstances, but it is a relevant factor if you're d…

If you're going to worry about that, wouldn't you be more concerned about the operator being fully blind? And simply justify not hiring the vision impaired for this particular position?

"safety-critical systems with a large user base"

Surely a missile warning system would be operated by a very, very small number of people, on the order of twenty or thirty?

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

#338

Post by ClassyJacket » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #83

itronitron wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This routinely happens where I work. To the extent that our UI is this random mishmash of paradigms depending on who was in the room when the decision was made. If I had a nickel for every time I said "if the mechanical hardware does (blank) we should let the user know so they know not to start the rest of the process" only to get blank stares or laughter from the senior engineers, I would retire. "We'll take care of…

"We'll take care of it with training" is a common refrain, as if training can be remembered with perfect clarity at all times.

Something I brought up at my IT Support job yesterday regarding the crazy idea I had to actually document some processes and rules we have. Flow charts and tables and such. Having a reference you can use at any time is much more efficient than expecting everyone to remember literally thousands of facts they're told once in two weeks of training.

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

#339

Post by krapp » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

I remember when former threads about this came up, some people were certain that it was impossible that a mistake like this could come down to "pushing the wrong button," because surely there would be safeguards and sanity checks in place.

Ironically, moving the ballistic missile alert to an actual physical button separate from everything else would have been better than... this. This looks like it's literally just an HTML page on an internal network. Do they send the alert command through the query string or something?

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

#340

Post by ams6110 » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

scoggs wrote: post #335

noir_lord wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My boss is both understanding and willing to listen, after working with him for 6mths I really can't blame the system on him. The out sourced developers however...very much yes I can. Half the things do the wrong thing wrong, the other half is the wrong thing sorta working. There was clearly no attempt to understand what the user wanted or any attempt to ask the simple questions like "Why do you want X, is X related…

It's so painful running into brick wall after brick wall of asking "Why do you want X and have you thought of the implications for Y, Z, and A-W?!", only to be met with sighs and eye rolls that we should just know and get it done. Blah. Bad day for me, I guess? I apologize.

A way to ask these questions that sometimes works better, is something like "can you explain the business value added by doing this, so that I can be sure my implementation achieves that?"

Asking "why X, why Y, why Z" can come off as challenging their knowledge, and questions like "would you also need W?" tend to get answered "yes, sounds good" so now you've just made more work for yourself.