What are the hats for?
A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
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Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#62What was the name of the discipline of designing these control rooms? I guess it wasn’t “user experience” or “unused interface” back then..
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#63I've operated in boiler room offices at large plants for almost 40 years, the mimic panel is a very valuable tool. With miles of piping carrying water and steam for various reasons, the panels help keep it all straight in your mind. These panels are in hospitals, chemical plants, data centers, Navy ships and subs and many other places similar to where I work. I can't imagine what it feels like to work in a nuke facil…
I was maintaining instrumentation is similar control rooms. The man behind panel. Petrochemical industry, recorders, indicators, alarms, tranducers, pneum. controllers. Mix of pneumatic and electronic technology (thermionic valves mostly). US technology from 50's/60's and it looked the same like this. Remember Taylor 700T chopper stabilized thermocouple transducer, Honeywell, Fisher instrumentation...
Did you ever work with the Honeywell TDC-3000 ?
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#64The most visually appealing part is the use of colours that you wouldn’t expect on an industrial control panel. The first picture shows a shade of blue, as well as red and yellow symbols for whatever they might mean. Also, approximately fifteen images down shows a switch control panel for a two-platform, triple-track Moscow Metro station (Полежаевская) that was intended to have a branch line, but mothballed due to fu…
Always felt bad when replacing these old control rooms, there is a certain beauty and elegance to their design that is missing in modern HMIs. This sort of color coding is common in industrial settings and definitely was on panelboards of the era. It would be really interesting if the color coding seen here in any way aligns with ANSI/ASME A13.1.
I doubt regarding ANSI, given that Soviet versus US conventions were somewhat divergent.
I don’t have specific examples, but I would look at the design of Soyuz in comparison to the design of Apollo.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
f8 and be there.
For the "f/8 and be there" philosophy of getting a usable shot at all, I agree with the simplicity of having a sensible default, and of course with the importance of being where the story is. In the digital era, and as a student/amateur who often kept the strobe in the bag, I'd modify that to "f/4 and be there". f/4 with autofocus, aperture-priority automatic exposure, ISO 400 gave great images, with faster exposure…
I'd modify that to "f/4 and be there".
Sure, because my micro 4/3 sensor has a crop factor of 2:1, so when I set to f4, I'm effectively getting a 35mm f8.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#66Can you even imagine how relaxing it would be to have the same interface to your systems, every day, with all the parts in one physical location and never moving? Learn it once, then nothing changes for years and years, or if it does it's usually adding on, not replacing or re-arranging existing stuff? Man, that would be nice.
Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today). One of my favorite was when I spent years starting to learn photojournalism on the side: the mechanics of using a camera is only a small part of it (it's mostly about understanding and conveying a story), but even at my student/amateur level, the muscle memory with pro DSLR and lenses was crazy-effective. I even got a shot that happ…
By law a lot of motorcycle controls are standardized both to ensure sane controls (think suicide clutch) as well as standardization (1 down 4 up).
Riding a motorcycle involves all four of your limbs having a dedicated control (left arm clutch; right arm throttle and front break; left leg shifter; right leg rear break).
It is so satisfying having your body operate all of these controls without a conscious thought.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#67The biggest problem with the Soviet Union was Brezhnev not being able to keep with his economic reforms after 1974. Seeing Russia nowadays it is sometimes hard to believe that once they were the second economy in the world, before being removed from this post by Japan. Had they enacted Chinese style reforms they could have avoided the whole disastrous 90s
They tried. Gorbachev wanted to turn Russia into another Sweden. Bush the Elder convinced the World Bank not to loan to them unless they agreed to impose neoliberal economic policies. Which led to oligarchy. And then Putin.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#68It feels like I’m looking at a physical representation of my metrics dashboards.
I can only imagine the issue would be much harder to trace down if anything was off though.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#69Can you even imagine how relaxing it would be to have the same interface to your systems, every day, with all the parts in one physical location and never moving? Learn it once, then nothing changes for years and years, or if it does it's usually adding on, not replacing or re-arranging existing stuff? Man, that would be nice.
Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today). One of my favorite was when I spent years starting to learn photojournalism on the side: the mechanics of using a camera is only a small part of it (it's mostly about understanding and conveying a story), but even at my student/amateur level, the muscle memory with pro DSLR and lenses was crazy-effective. I even got a shot that happ…
> Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today).
Analogue gauges are amazing for real-time feedback, for example my espresso machine needle will oscillate wildly at the vibratory pump frequency if i don'tnt have the grind setting quite right. A digital sensor and display would average it out and be nowhere near as useful.
Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)
#70I want to mess around in an oculus quest 2 version of these. Flicking switches and causing meltdowns just to hear and see the alarms firing.