The Hawaii Missile Alert Culprit: Poorly Chosen File Names

Jared Spool – UX Immersion Interactions

A couple of weeks ago, the people of Hawaii were told that they were under missile attack. They weren’t, but that didn’t stop the warning being terrifying.

The cause was quickly narrowed down to poor user interface design. But poor user interface design is of course but one step in the chain of whys. This post follows several more links in the chain – giving a level of detail which at one level is more than most people will want or need, but using that to make some important points of much wider application. One is that critical designs need critical testing – and more generally that the value of design is not in the presence (or absence) of veneer. Another is that maintaining things is important and can be particularly difficult for systems funded on the basis that when they have been built, they are finished. The consequences of that approach may be irritating or they may be close to catastrophic, but they can be addressed only when there is recognition that, as David Eaves put it, you can either iterate before you fail, or you can do it after you fail, but you’ll do it either way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.