As always, big industrial control rooms look amazing. But wow, that way of showing ads is one of the worst I've ever seen. (I really do need adblock on mobile ig)
Firefox mobile + ublock origin is the way.
The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
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Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#12It's not specific to the Soviet world, any control room built before computers looks like that. The examples I'm familiar with is nuclear power plants from the 70s: - here's Bugey, the oldest active nuclear plant in France: https://cdn-s-www.leprogres.fr/images/5A6732BE-29F9-43FA-806... - And here's Dampierre, the second oldest, which I was lucky enough to visit: https://www.larep.fr/photoSRC/Gw--/centrale-nucleaire-…
Very true. It reminds me of the aesthetic[1] of German musician Hainbach[2]'s studio.
He makes use of a lot of early test equipment. The look is very functional but not ugly. It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals.
I see the same thing in mid-century BBC studios.
--
1. Which I love.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#13I love these!
Highly relevant: "Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green"
Link: https://bethmathews.substack.com/p/why-so-many-control-rooms...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47518960 (3 months ago)
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#14It's not specific to the Soviet world, any control room built before computers looks like that. The examples I'm familiar with is nuclear power plants from the 70s: - here's Bugey, the oldest active nuclear plant in France: https://cdn-s-www.leprogres.fr/images/5A6732BE-29F9-43FA-806... - And here's Dampierre, the second oldest, which I was lucky enough to visit: https://www.larep.fr/photoSRC/Gw--/centrale-nucleaire-…
Very true. It reminds me of the aesthetic[1] of German musician Hainbach[2]'s studio. He makes use of a lot of early test equipment. The look is very functional but not ugly. It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. I see the same thing in mid-century BBC studios. -- 1. Which I love. 2. https://www.hainbachmusik.com/
> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals.
Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#15This reminds me of "Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green":
[0] https://bethmathews.substack.com/p/why-so-many-control-rooms...
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#16Each time I see beauty in old machinery I think about the recent IEEE article that started with something like "AI designs aren't limited by outdated concepts like simplicity and aesthetics." and remember that there is someone that goes to a museum and sees inefficiences and time wasted on unnecessary detail instead of inspiration.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. It reminds me of the aesthetic[1] of German musician Hainbach[2]'s studio. He makes use of a lot of early test equipment. The look is very functional but not ugly. It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. I see the same thing in mid-century BBC studios. -- 1. Which I love. 2. https://www.hainbachmusik.com/
> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"
Sorry to break a myth, but you'll never hear someone about “THE RED BUTTON ” in a nuclear control room. There's way too much buttons that happens to be red for that.
Nuclear operators are highly trained professionals (two years of training in France, for instance) who know their machine by heart, so what you'll hear will be much more specific like “isolate vapor generator number 3”. Also, the way it's organized it will very rarely be orders, but instead description if what each of them are doing while following the safety procedure, to keep other crew members aware of what they're doing.
So no “Press that god damn red button!” but instead “I'm bypassing turbine through GCTA and moving to step 342.B.3”.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. It reminds me of the aesthetic[1] of German musician Hainbach[2]'s studio. He makes use of a lot of early test equipment. The look is very functional but not ugly. It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. I see the same thing in mid-century BBC studios. -- 1. Which I love. 2. https://www.hainbachmusik.com/
> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"
Vintage nuclear plants are also infamously used as the canonical examples of bad UI in teaching.
To paraphrase, the Three Mile Island Disaster happened because the operators couldn't discern the right red light in a sea of other lights and noise.
https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nu...
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#19Having worked on SCADA software in the past, I find the evolution of the control room UX fascinating. You can see in these pictures, where every input and output is a real physical thing, just how much density of information was required for Operators to process. As we moved to computer screens representing the same, those original screens would represent these control room layouts faithfully (and you can understand…
Has the required operating information increased exponentially? My sense is that computers lowered operating information density by merging multiple signals into fewer, more complex ones.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"
Vintage nuclear plants are also infamously used as the canonical examples of bad UI in teaching. To paraphrase, the Three Mile Island Disaster happened because the operators couldn't discern the right red light in a sea of other lights and noise. https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nu...
The lessons of TMI have been learned though, the accident has been thoroughly investigated and that's the reason why it's now being discussed in class.