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> When a physical control is replaced by a digital interface, it is the job of a designer to translate the functions of the controls into pixels. If designed we

> When a physical control is replaced by a digital interface, it is the job of a designer to translate the functions of the controls into pixels. If designed well the UI is intuitive. When designed poorly, the interface is difficult to understand and causes users to make mistakes. Ugh. I don't want to quote all 25 of the things I disagree with about this article, so here's the first one that came up. A well-designed UI is not necessarily intuitive. Think about vi, or the command line, or Blender, or Figma, or pretty much any UI designed for experts who spend every day using the system. These UIs trade intuitiveness and simplicity for power and speed. They do so knowingly. It's not actually desirable to make a UI intuitive—which is to say, to make it behave the way a naive user would expect the first time they use it. Not if you can instead make it more powerful, and train the users how to use it instead. An intuitive submarine control might have buttons to go up and down, left and right, and turn, and then a big red button that says "launch torpedo", like in video games. But I bet that's a bad UI for a real submarine. Instead you want it to have a lot of information on the screen, and hundreds of different functions it can perform if only you've gone through an intense training program to learn how to operate it, which is what the Navy does. I don't think that being difficult to understand and prone to making mistakes is the opposite of intuitive, either. I think those are orthogonal. None of this is to excuse the design of that system, which I've never used, and can't defend or attack. It's just I know that this is a hard problem that you can't get around by saying "just design it better".

disillusioned 2y ago
This is a really interesting counter-argument. The idea that the design should be dumbed down so, what, a lay-person who has never encountered the system can take over and drive the ship accurately? is an appealing one: it makes the case that, all else being equal, simplicity should win out. I would argue that there's an in-between: good design is not orthogonal to intuitive design. And I would also argue that the human factor component shouldn't be missed here, both in terms of sleep deprivation, but also in terms of being able to easily and quickly identify error states or misconfigurations at a glance, without too much cognitive overload. Cognitive overload and complex interfaces are solved with training and repetition: we do this regularly in aviation, pilotage, and all sorts of complex interfaces. But I guess it's worth asking aloud, if you can reduce some of the cognitive overload, aren't you effectively defending in depth? Sure, every complex system could be distilled to a memorized green screen incantation, and peak performance can be reached by fusing the human brain to a well-mapped, ultra-dense information-fest. But the reality of the situation is that, when training and tiredness failed these sailors, the interface further piled on _unnecessarily_. It could have been designed to be a bit more intuitive, and that might very well have saved the lives of 10 people and $223 million dollars of taxpayer money. "This is a hard problem that you can't get around by just saying 'just design it better'" sure downplays that amount of impact intuitive, clear design can have on, say, preventing the swiss cheese holes from aligning in this particular case.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  > if you can reduce some of the cognitive overload, aren't you effectively defending in depth? Absolutely. But in practice, cognitive overload rears its head in many ways. When most people think of an intuitive system, they think of a simple system as measured in the density of information on screen ("just show me what I need to know, nothing else") and the paucity of options you have to select from (Hick's law and so forth). But if you have to perform complex activities with such a system, the seeming simplicity results in actual complexity, since you have to do things like (for example) diving into a dozen nested layers of menus and screens to reach an option that was hidden there in order to (try to) reduce cognitive burden. A different, equally valid measurement of simplicity (and cognitive burden) is how few transitions or state changes you have to suffer through to get to the state you want to be in. That is to say: how many steps you have to take to do what you want. And since there's a chance to make an error at each step, it's not even just a question of saving clicks, it can actually be more error prone. I say these measurements are equally valid, but not that either of them are sufficiently robust ways of thinking about good design. I'm also not trying to downplay the impact of clear, intuitive design. The point I'm trying to make is that there is no formula for making designs clear and intuitive; it's actually quite complicated. In fact, in most cases, you can't even do it, you can only find a tradeoff between imperfect solutions. Anecdotally, I have designed dense, complex systems for quantum computing experimentalists—people much smarter than me—and had them tell me "make it simpler!". I've also tried to make simple systems for biomedical researchers, and had them tell me, in so many words, to make the UI denser and more complex. There's no correct level of simplicity you can arrive at a priori, it's different for every case, and you have to reach the right balance through testing. If you don't do enough testing, your users become your testers. The consequences are not usually this grave.
  - moring 2y ago
    It seems to me that an unspoken assumption in this thread is that "design" is purely theoretical work, performed by a designer. If the behavior of a sleep-deprived sailor is an unknown variable, then the obvious solution is to get a sleep-deprived sailor involved in the design process. This is not particularly complex, and while _some_ money is involved, preventing this accident would basically give you a budget of $223 million, human lives not even taken into account.
pdonis 2y ago
The overall design of "controls" for something as complicated as a ship (or submarine) is of course going to be complex, and would not be expected to cater to the intuitions of a naive user. But if you're talking about the basic ship handling controls--rudder and throttles--which were the controls involved in this case, those should be as simple and intuitive as possible, and should be designed in a way that makes it obvious what the rudder and engines are doing, obvious to the point that even a naive user would have a good shot at being able to figure it out. That's because those controls are not only the most basic ones, but the most important ones for ship safety. You don't want them to be complicated or hard to learn. This incident was a good example of what happens when this basic principle is not followed. Of course that wasn't the only factor involved, crew training and proficiency comes into play too, but since even the Captain and the Officer of the Deck couldn't tell what the rudder and throttles were doing, there was obviously a huge problem with the way those controls were designed.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  Also, given the possible context of wartime, the most basic "make the ship go" controls absolutely need to be understandable and usable by a concussed one-armed half-blind ensign who just got on board yesterday... because, sometimes, that's what happens.
jki275 2y ago
I don't agree, from the perspective of someone who has driven ships, stood console watches on complex combat direction systems, and regularly flies flight simulators for fun. The UI for driving a vehicle needs to be simple and intuitive. Full Stop. There is absolutely a place for complex displays. There were 14 people on the bridge the day the McCain had its collision. Any number of them can monitor complex screens with tons of information. The young Sailor driving the ship needs to know where his rudder sits and what RPM his engines are turning. In fact, there are two of them, and the traditional method is that one drives and monitors the rudder, and one runs the engines. They don't need to worry about complex situations, the helm needs to know the conning officer ordered 5 degrees right rudder, they ordered 5 degrees right rudder with the wheel in front of them, and the screen or indicator in front of them indicates the rudder is right 5 degrees. Similarly, Lee Helm needs to know the conning officer ordered turns for all ahead full, they shifted the great big throttle handles to the all ahead full position, and both engines indicate all head full. They don't need to know about engine temperatures, synchro and servo status, set and drift, winds, etc. They need to drive the damn ship in the manner they are directed to drive the ship. There were 12 other people on that bridge who could handle all of those things that matter to them. Helm and Lee Helm need to drive the ship.
- krisoft 2y ago
  It sounds like you are knowledgeable about this stuff so if I don’t mind you asking: Why is it a good idea to use a full human to turn a wheel? The way I understand what you are saying is that the conning officer shouts “5 degrees right rudder” and some dude listens to that and puts the rudder 5 degrees right. I understand that this makes sense if turning the wheel takes physical force. There is someone who provides the smarts which way to turn it, and someone who provides the raw power to do it. But if it requires no excertion to do it, didn’t we just made a shitty voice interface for the conning officer? With all the associated manning requirement and potential for mishearing orders, and potential for confusion? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the conning officer to tap in their desired rudder on the interface themselves?
  - m2fkxy 2y ago
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It's an important distinction to make tbh. However, "intuitive" doesn't necessarily mean "intuitive to a lay person", but it should be intuitive to someone in that domain. The "gang" checkbox is not intuitive to me, but to a sailor it probably has a lot of meaning, just like "commit no-verify and push force" is intuitive to me, but gobbledygook for a layperson. But yes, a UI should be designed for the end-user, and power-user UI/UX design is a rare skill.

disillusioned 2y ago

This is a really interesting counter-argument. The idea that the design should be dumbed down so, what, a lay-person who has never encountered the system can take over and drive the ship accurately? is an appealing one: it makes the case that, all else being equal, simplicity should win out. I would argue that there's an in-between: good design is not orthogonal to intuitive design. And I would also argue that the human factor component shouldn't be missed here, both in terms of sleep deprivation, but also in terms of being able to easily and quickly identify error states or misconfigurations at a glance, without too much cognitive overload. Cognitive overload and complex interfaces are solved with training and repetition: we do this regularly in aviation, pilotage, and all sorts of complex interfaces. But I guess it's worth asking aloud, if you can reduce some of the cognitive overload, aren't you effectively defending in depth? Sure, every complex system could be distilled to a memorized green screen incantation, and peak performance can be reached by fusing the human brain to a well-mapped, ultra-dense information-fest. But the reality of the situation is that, when training and tiredness failed these sailors, the interface further piled on _unnecessarily_. It could have been designed to be a bit more intuitive, and that might very well have saved the lives of 10 people and $223 million dollars of taxpayer money. "This is a hard problem that you can't get around by just saying 'just design it better'" sure downplays that amount of impact intuitive, clear design can have on, say, preventing the swiss cheese holes from aligning in this particular case.

karaterobot 2y ago
> if you can reduce some of the cognitive overload, aren't you effectively defending in depth? Absolutely. But in practice, cognitive overload rears its head in many ways. When most people think of an intuitive system, they think of a simple system as measured in the density of information on screen ("just show me what I need to know, nothing else") and the paucity of options you have to select from (Hick's law and so forth). But if you have to perform complex activities with such a system, the seeming simplicity results in actual complexity, since you have to do things like (for example) diving into a dozen nested layers of menus and screens to reach an option that was hidden there in order to (try to) reduce cognitive burden. A different, equally valid measurement of simplicity (and cognitive burden) is how few transitions or state changes you have to suffer through to get to the state you want to be in. That is to say: how many steps you have to take to do what you want. And since there's a chance to make an error at each step, it's not even just a question of saving clicks, it can actually be more error prone. I say these measurements are equally valid, but not that either of them are sufficiently robust ways of thinking about good design. I'm also not trying to downplay the impact of clear, intuitive design. The point I'm trying to make is that there is no formula for making designs clear and intuitive; it's actually quite complicated. In fact, in most cases, you can't even do it, you can only find a tradeoff between imperfect solutions. Anecdotally, I have designed dense, complex systems for quantum computing experimentalists—people much smarter than me—and had them tell me "make it simpler!". I've also tried to make simple systems for biomedical researchers, and had them tell me, in so many words, to make the UI denser and more complex. There's no correct level of simplicity you can arrive at a priori, it's different for every case, and you have to reach the right balance through testing. If you don't do enough testing, your users become your testers. The consequences are not usually this grave.
- moring 2y ago
  It seems to me that an unspoken assumption in this thread is that "design" is purely theoretical work, performed by a designer. If the behavior of a sleep-deprived sailor is an unknown variable, then the obvious solution is to get a sleep-deprived sailor involved in the design process. This is not particularly complex, and while _some_ money is involved, preventing this accident would basically give you a budget of $223 million, human lives not even taken into account.

pdonis 2y ago

The overall design of "controls" for something as complicated as a ship (or submarine) is of course going to be complex, and would not be expected to cater to the intuitions of a naive user. But if you're talking about the basic ship handling controls--rudder and throttles--which were the controls involved in this case, those should be as simple and intuitive as possible, and should be designed in a way that makes it obvious what the rudder and engines are doing, obvious to the point that even a naive user would have a good shot at being able to figure it out. That's because those controls are not only the most basic ones, but the most important ones for ship safety. You don't want them to be complicated or hard to learn. This incident was a good example of what happens when this basic principle is not followed. Of course that wasn't the only factor involved, crew training and proficiency comes into play too, but since even the Captain and the Officer of the Deck couldn't tell what the rudder and throttles were doing, there was obviously a huge problem with the way those controls were designed.

crooked-v 2y ago
Also, given the possible context of wartime, the most basic "make the ship go" controls absolutely need to be understandable and usable by a concussed one-armed half-blind ensign who just got on board yesterday... because, sometimes, that's what happens.

jki275 2y ago

I don't agree, from the perspective of someone who has driven ships, stood console watches on complex combat direction systems, and regularly flies flight simulators for fun. The UI for driving a vehicle needs to be simple and intuitive. Full Stop. There is absolutely a place for complex displays. There were 14 people on the bridge the day the McCain had its collision. Any number of them can monitor complex screens with tons of information. The young Sailor driving the ship needs to know where his rudder sits and what RPM his engines are turning. In fact, there are two of them, and the traditional method is that one drives and monitors the rudder, and one runs the engines. They don't need to worry about complex situations, the helm needs to know the conning officer ordered 5 degrees right rudder, they ordered 5 degrees right rudder with the wheel in front of them, and the screen or indicator in front of them indicates the rudder is right 5 degrees. Similarly, Lee Helm needs to know the conning officer ordered turns for all ahead full, they shifted the great big throttle handles to the all ahead full position, and both engines indicate all head full. They don't need to know about engine temperatures, synchro and servo status, set and drift, winds, etc. They need to drive the damn ship in the manner they are directed to drive the ship. There were 12 other people on that bridge who could handle all of those things that matter to them. Helm and Lee Helm need to drive the ship.

krisoft 2y ago
It sounds like you are knowledgeable about this stuff so if I don’t mind you asking: Why is it a good idea to use a full human to turn a wheel? The way I understand what you are saying is that the conning officer shouts “5 degrees right rudder” and some dude listens to that and puts the rudder 5 degrees right. I understand that this makes sense if turning the wheel takes physical force. There is someone who provides the smarts which way to turn it, and someone who provides the raw power to do it. But if it requires no excertion to do it, didn’t we just made a shitty voice interface for the conning officer? With all the associated manning requirement and potential for mishearing orders, and potential for confusion? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the conning officer to tap in their desired rudder on the interface themselves?
- m2fkxy 2y ago

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

It's an important distinction to make tbh. However, "intuitive" doesn't necessarily mean "intuitive to a lay person", but it should be intuitive to someone in that domain. The "gang" checkbox is not intuitive to me, but to a sailor it probably has a lot of meaning, just like "commit no-verify and push force" is intuitive to me, but gobbledygook for a layperson. But yes, a UI should be designed for the end-user, and power-user UI/UX design is a rare skill.