British CAA Exposes Egocentric Cockpit Computer Designers
The phone conversations between literary agent Sam Fleishman and myself continue.
Sam: "You showed me one example of what the British FAA means by 'clumsy and cumbersome' cockpit displays. Are other displays a problem?"
John: "Let me show you an elegant design that light plane pilots use every day. Count the icons. See if you can tell what each does. Note that Garmin uses a standard keyboard, making typing a breeze. Notice that everything is on one screen. Watch how easily she gets back to the home screen if she makes a mistake."
Sam: "Taking notes."
John: "Check out the high-def screen. When she shifts to the car mode, imagine the streets as highways that pilots could fly. Tell me if you could use this right off the bat. Okay, cue the clip."
Sam: "That's like the Garmin GPS when I rent a car. If I get lost, a voice guides and shows me turn-by-turn how to get where I'm supposed to be."
John: "I'll set up this next clip -- watch this Boeing 777 instructor I call Captain Oops show how to re-program the Computer after approach radar slam-dunks him to a different runway than he'd programmed. Check out the low-def screen tough on weary eyes and the briar patch of sixty-nine keys. Check out Captain Oops stumble, 'Oops . . . I deleted . . . sorry . . . where's that damn 'M'?' But the ooopses aren't his fault. The craplex design ju-jitsus him into mistakes that snowball."
Sam: "Is this real?"
John: "Happens every day around the globe. Watch his finger get lost trying to type 'M' and 'FLICR.' Keep in mind that Intel CEO Paul Otellini says computers should be easy and fun. Things get so bad, Oops has to 'pause' -- position-freeze -- the simulator, or fly way past the runway at four miles a minute."
Sam: "I take it you guys don't have this magic 'pause' feature on the jet."
John: "Not exactly. Okay; cue the clip."
Sam: "That's hilarious. Is that real or a gag?"
John: "Real as can be. Pilots aren't programmable; we're human beings. Check out this visual metaphor showing how that craplex design sucked Oops' mind down this mental fire tunnel -- have your volume up."
Sam: "You have science to back that up?"
John: "Always; five of my copilots confided that their captain's attention fell down that fire tunnel while their plane slowed to a stall over Long Island approaching JFK."
Sam: "We could have had five more Buffalo-type crashes? What saved them?"
John: "Autothrottles the Feds mandate for big jets those Buffalo kid pilots didn't have. How old would you guess those keypad and Farsi designs are?"
Sam: "I don't know . . . ten years?"
John: "Check out this 1973 Zenith; see if anything looks familiar."
Sam: "Gawd, I hated that. Look at that fuzzy screen! In DOS, they made you type C, colon, forward slash, or back slash -- never figured which -- then a forward arrow, get a Bad Command warning, so had to start all over, then repeat my mistake. I wanted to use a flame thrower . . . they have you guys flying with Microsoft's first operating system."
John: "Oh, the design is ancient. Check out this original Designer teaching pilots how to talk to his new Computer."
John: "Those Morse dit-dah-dits Captain Oops staggered through is an instant replay of the Christmas '95 crash at Cali, Colombia -- though Transport Canada warned the FAA to overhaul that tappity-tap-tap Morse code design way back in '97."
Sam: "You're saying the FAA told the Canadian government to pound sand?"
John: "Oh, NASA documented in 2006 that the FAA is 'studying' the issue."
Sam: "They haven't fixed it after fifteen damned years! What are they waiting for?"
John: "More corpses. I'm emailing you a panoramic of that Christmas '95 mountaintop crash. Check out the path the plane cut through the jungle at 250 miles per hour."
Sam: "Horrid; how many?"
John: "A hundred fifty-nine -- twelve children who had sugarplums dancing in their heads. This next one shows investigators picking through their remains."
Sam: "Dreadful; nothing but pieces."
John: "Wanna see their murderer? Focus on the center; see anything familiar?"
Sam: "Oh . . . my . . . gawd."
John: "The Cali captain spent the last four minutes of his life frantically tappity-tap-tap- tapping dit-dah-dits into Captain Oops' keypad, hoping the Computer would save them; it was quite happy to murder them. Check out this visual metaphor of those pilots battling the Computer."
Read all John Halliday's columns here.