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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

#361

Post by megy »

jrockway wrote: post #275
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…

I don't know. The interface could be better, but a different interface wouldn't necessarily stop someone who's confused from sending the wrong alert. How many times do you see a dialog box and click "yes" without even reading it? I do it all the time, and it's usually fine... except sometimes I think "wait, what did I just agree to!?" Someone under pressure to get that drill going can easily make the same mistakes, n…

> The interface could be better, but a different interface wouldn't necessarily stop someone who's confused from sending the wrong alert. How many times do you see a dialog box and click "yes" without even reading it?

How many times to I test the SMS delivery system? Not very often, so I am going to be more careful with any popups. Maybe you only use your computer once a month?

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

#362

Post by wmeredith »

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…

Self promotion incoming...

I’ve written a few versions of this article over the years. I keep hoping I’ll see the day that it’s no longer prescient: “Why the DMV Website Sucks” https://hackernoon.com/why-the-dmv-website-sucks-2f27a367baa...

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

#363

Post by fapjacks »

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…

Plus also Hawaii is a deeply nepotistic state. You don't get a contract to build this kind of thing without knowing somebody who knows somebody. So bidding for this kind of work is much less about qualifications than it is about who you know. Way, way less than anywhere on the mainland. Way less. Whatever you're thinking along the lines of "Oh, no, this is just what it's like in government work," it's not even close to the situation in Hawaii.

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

#364

Post by noir_lord »

ams6110 wrote: post #340
scoggs wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "can you explain the business value added by doing this, so that I can be sure my implementation achieves that?"

100% this - "Have you considered that our long lead times on inventory means we increase our holding costs?" is a good lead-in to exploring how to reduce that.

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

#365

Post by sobani »

bsder wrote: post #342
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.

Sadly, that IS important. When someone is in a crisis situation, their actions have to be the SAME as a drill. Making someone do or type something different when things are already hectic is likely to send them into brain-lock. The solution is something extra that pops up AFTER doing everything the same that says "Sending real alert in 10 ... 9 ... 8 ..." with a "Type: "Abort" in text field to stop". If the operator…

> Type: "Abort"

I can imagine that when someone accidentally sends out a real alert, the "Oh F" moment will last longer than the 10 seconds you give the operator to type those 5 characters, in the correct order, with shaky fingers.

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

#366

Post by zimpenfish »

sydd wrote: post #169
zimpenfish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok, you've hired William because he's got 20/20 and full colour vision.

One problem: William's in the toilet. He had a bad taco for lunch and honestly, he's going to be in there for a good 10 minutes. And there's a missile coming. Luckily Frank the IT guy is there and knows what to do but ... he's colourblind!

Oh dear. He's just sent out a dummy warning by mistake and now half of Hawaii is going to die. Well done.

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

#367

Post by zimpenfish »

jdmichal wrote: post #142
zimpenfish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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#...

> You'll notice that all the icons differentiate in both color and form.

Good stuff but I think they could probably have gone with something else for "Neutral" - the distinction between a 16:10 rectangle and a square could easily be missed in a hurry, especially at small sizes.

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

#368

Post by godshatter »

lisper wrote: post #293
jrockway wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. The interface could be better, but a different interface wouldn't necessarily stop someone who's confused from sending the wrong alert. How many times do you see a dialog box and click "yes" without even reading it? I do it all the time, and it's usually fine... except sometimes I think "wait, what did I just agree to!?" Someone under pressure to get that drill going can easily make the same mistakes, n…

I can think of two obvious mitigations that would have helped a lot. 1. Separate items intended to be tests from items intended to be live warnings. Draw a green (or yellow) box around the test items and a red box around the live items. 2. Require a confirmation before sending out a live item, and not just clicking a button. Put up a big red flashing warning that says, "You are about to send out a live warning, are y…

Taking 1 a little farther, maybe have the first page be links to the test page or the emergency page then add some warnings to the top of the emergency page that make it damn clear that clicking any of the links, even accidentally, will send an actual emergency alert. Make everything red and scary. Hell, make it blink if you have to.

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

#369

Post by nulagrithom »

noir_lord wrote: post #364
ams6110 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "can you explain the business value added by doing this, so that I can be sure my implementation achieves that?" 100% this - "Have you considered that our long lead times on inventory means we increase our holding costs?" is a good lead-in to exploring how to reduce that.

Borderline thread necro here but...

> "Have you considered that our long lead times on inventory means we increase our holding costs?"

What's frustrating about this is now we also have to understand the business overall, and that's kind of the problem in the first place: nobody has the patience to explain it.

So in addition to coming up to speed on whatever tech stack they have, we're going to have to find someone who understands and is capable of explaining the (sometimes completely foreign to us) business side of things and come up to speed on that too. That's a lot of ramp up time, especially when nobody wants to hand out raises and you're better off finding a new gig roughly every other year anyway.

I'm currently working somewhere with people that are great at explaining the business, and are willing to discuss at length the intricacies of how anything works at any time. The tech stack is abysmal, but being able to easily understand the business makes it worth dealing with the dumpster fire of a LoB app. I'd take it over the previous job, where we had greenfield project, bleeding edge tech, and money, but nobody could tell me how the hell the business worked...

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

#370

Post by noir_lord »

nulagrithom wrote: post #369
noir_lord wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "can you explain the business value added by doing this, so that I can be sure my implementation achieves that?" 100% this - "Have you considered that our long lead times on inventory means we increase our holding costs?" is a good lead-in to exploring how to reduce that.

Borderline thread necro here but... > "Have you considered that our long lead times on inventory means we increase our holding costs?" What's frustrating about this is now we also have to understand the business overall, and that's kind of the problem in the first place: nobody has the patience to explain it. So in addition to coming up to speed on whatever tech stack they have, we're going to have to find someone wh…

I didn't wait for anyone to explain it to me, I went to the library and checked out a bunch of books they had on Supply Chain Management/Operations Management and Inventory Control and then read them.

That gave me enough of a grasp of the principles and more importantly the nomenclature that I could then talk to people in their language not mine.

To me it's a normalised series of tables to them it's WIP inventory.

One of the things DDD got right (if you remove the buzzword bingo/hype) was the idea of a 'common language'.

Unfortunately in my experience (couple of decades) most business people don't want a common language, they want you to understand theirs.

It is surprising how little theoretical knowledge people who work in a field use on a day to day basis.

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