E-SPEAIT Week 9

 

Implementing the correct design requires an investment in time and effort, but getting it wrong might be exponentially more costly. When testing software, something that can be heard is „human error“. But it’s actually the designers responsibility to anticipate errors and make sure they won’t happen. Good design and usability are important everywhere and especially in high-leverage situations. For example, on January 13, 2018, residents of Hawaii were in the shock of their lives. Saturday morning, Hawaii Emergency Management Agency issued an alert to residents phones saying „BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.“

The political climate and tensions with North Korea made people panic. They rushed to shelters, highways were flooded with cars and everyone was trying to get in touch with their family. One person said „We fully felt like we were about to die. I drove to get my kids even though I knew I probably wouldn’t make it, and was fully visualizing what was happening while I was on the road. It was awful“. 30 minutes later, different news sources, public electronic signs and such reported that it was a mistake and there is no threat. Spokesperson for the agency said „Someone clicked the wrong thing on the computer“. This makes you wonder, what does the UI look like. It might have poor labelling, badly organized and robust. A system like that should be designed considering the stress on the person using the system in case of a real emergency.

A good example of design could be the WC and toilet signs. It doesn’t matter where you are, you understand what is meant when the sign says „WC“. They seem to be understood by most people. Another globally understandable example could be the rocker switch labelled with numbers One and Zero (I/O), where One is „ON“ and Zero is „OFF“.  A bit more IT related example is putting a fingerprint sensor or face recognition on phones. Makes lives easier by getting Access to the phone faster, but also raises new security threats.

Lastly, the emergency call button.  Every phone seems to have an option to call an emergency service without unlocking the phone. This is very useful in every situation. Ability to call the services with another persons phone. Also some phones that are designed for elderly, that have few but huge buttons (another good design), have a separate physical button or switch somewhere on the phone, making it easy for elders in distress to call for help.

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