[Sigia-l] Can UI designers kill people?

[Benjamin Speaks]

Interesting story here...

I recently provided consulting services for a very 
well known defense contractor.  Basically, I worked 
as their HCI and information architect SME.  The 
product I was helping them redesign was used to 
dispatch the appropriate resources (police and 
fire/rescue) to disaster scenes.  The application was 
interaction design heavy and "inefficiencies" in the 
usability of the product could result in "collateral" 
(isn't that a polite term?) losses.  

Finally, the aggregrated dashboard view was a real 
estate pig and an information designers nightmare.  

Anyway, this example is one the many software systems 
that can have an obvious impact on the public good.  

Bottom line a "UI can kill people" if it operates in 
a real time fashion (thus having exceptionally small 
windows for human operators to realize and correct 
mistakes) and depends on human intervention for 
immediate action.  Most of the usability issues I 
witnessed were related to the observation that the 
system provide prompt feedback but human operators 
were slow to recognize the visual cues provided by 
the interface.

(Sidebar Discussion:  For those of you on another IA 
listserv discussing why IA isn't utilized 
in "traditional" software environments I would say 
that it is in many senses but we just haven't sold 
the title out there.  Also, the web space is 
associated with IA because in traditional software 
environments many old-school engineers associate GUI 
standards (like Windows XP) with the concept of 
usability...which is correct but incorrect.  
Therefore, they don't see a need to hire information 
architectures since GUI standards are already in 
place).

Just my two cents worth...

--- Original Message ---
From: Jonas <jonas at kornet.nu>
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Can UI designers kill people?

>>There's a huge amount of work done on these issues 
and has been for many
>>years.  In light of that, the press release cited 
makes a pretty
>>simplistic claim: "gosh, flying an airplane can be 
pretty darn
>>complicated sometimes...we should design the 
cockpit better".
>
>The most interesting part with this study is not 
the "kill" factor.
>That deadly accidents can occur from poor design in 
high-risk environments=
> is well known, of course.
>
>I say this is the passage with broad implications.
>
>"At the same time, onboard computers started to 
manage a number of functions=
> and modes aiming at increasing safety and reducing 
workload.
>Unfortunately, the workload is still very high and 
the complexity of the=
> cockpit has dramatically increased."
>
>This is the insight that is missing in so many 
(other) systems; certainly=
> not just in airplanes.
>New, promised "simpler" systems that turns out to be 
more complicated than=
> previous ones...
>
>/jonas
>
>-- 
>
>Jonas S=F6derstr=F6m
>senior information architect
>Sweden