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 t

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.