6 ms·

> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quic

> It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"

stymaar 2mo ago
Sorry to break a myth, but you'll never hear someone about “THE RED BUTTON ” in a nuclear control room. There's way too much buttons that happens to be red for that. Nuclear operators are highly trained professionals (two years of training in France, for instance) who know their machine by heart, so what you'll hear will be much more specific like “isolate vapor generator number 3”. Also, the way it's organized it will very rarely be orders, but instead description if what each of them are doing while following the safety procedure, to keep other crew members aware of what they're doing. So no “Press that god damn red button!” but instead “I'm bypassing turbine through GCTA and moving to step 342.B.3”.
- wwind123 2mo ago
  A few years ago I listened to a seminar where a few real professional doctors discussed the hospital scenes in movies or TV shows. They mentioned that those dramatic and chaotic operation room scenes where the doctor yells commands with a loud voice look so fake to them. In a real operation room, everyone (including the doctor and the nurses) is highly trained, works in tandem calmly and efficiently -- there's never a need to raise voice.
  - viciousvoxel 2mo ago
    There's a big difference between the (controlled) chaos of an ER vs scheduled surgery, but it's still dramatized for TV obviously.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
  META: Make sure that your adblocker is set to 11 on that site. In the first edition of The Design of Everyday Things[0], Norman has a photo of beer tap handles on control levers in a nuclear power plant control room. This was done, to differentiate two important handles. I won’t link to the photo, because it’s on personal blogs, and I don’t want to hug anyone’s site to death. The photo was removed, in the current version. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
  - Rotundo 2mo ago
    I've seen pictures of the cockpit of a large plane where the gear lever has an actual wheel on the end of it. I think that is exceptional good design.
    - echoangle 2mo ago
      Actually mandated for aircraft: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22680/why-is-the-gear-handle-shaped-the-way-it-is https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22680/why-is-th... Also, the flaps lever is shaped like a small wing
Lio 2mo ago
Vintage nuclear plants are also infamously used as the canonical examples of bad UI in teaching. To paraphrase, the Three Mile Island Disaster happened because the operators couldn't discern the right red light in a sea of other lights and noise. https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nuclear-meltdown-9a6f762f6301 https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nu...
- stymaar 2mo ago
  The lessons of TMI have been learned though, the accident has been thoroughly investigated and that's the reason why it's now being discussed in class.
  - Lio 2mo ago
    Of course but we're talking about vintage control room designs here, some of which predate that investigation, so it still seems relevant to point out.
    - stymaar 2mo ago
      AFAIK All of them have been retrofitted to take the lessons from TMI into account (I can't be sure about other countries, but in France it's definitely the case). And more importantly, the process around how you're supposed to take information from the controls during a crisis has been completely rethought, negating the issues found during TMI investigations.

stymaar 2mo ago

Sorry to break a myth, but you'll never hear someone about “THE RED BUTTON ” in a nuclear control room. There's way too much buttons that happens to be red for that. Nuclear operators are highly trained professionals (two years of training in France, for instance) who know their machine by heart, so what you'll hear will be much more specific like “isolate vapor generator number 3”. Also, the way it's organized it will very rarely be orders, but instead description if what each of them are doing while following the safety procedure, to keep other crew members aware of what they're doing. So no “Press that god damn red button!” but instead “I'm bypassing turbine through GCTA and moving to step 342.B.3”.

wwind123 2mo ago
A few years ago I listened to a seminar where a few real professional doctors discussed the hospital scenes in movies or TV shows. They mentioned that those dramatic and chaotic operation room scenes where the doctor yells commands with a loud voice look so fake to them. In a real operation room, everyone (including the doctor and the nurses) is highly trained, works in tandem calmly and efficiently -- there's never a need to raise voice.
- viciousvoxel 2mo ago
  There's a big difference between the (controlled) chaos of an ER vs scheduled surgery, but it's still dramatized for TV obviously.
ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
META: Make sure that your adblocker is set to 11 on that site. In the first edition of The Design of Everyday Things[0], Norman has a photo of beer tap handles on control levers in a nuclear power plant control room. This was done, to differentiate two important handles. I won’t link to the photo, because it’s on personal blogs, and I don’t want to hug anyone’s site to death. The photo was removed, in the current version. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
- Rotundo 2mo ago
  I've seen pictures of the cockpit of a large plane where the gear lever has an actual wheel on the end of it. I think that is exceptional good design.
  - echoangle 2mo ago
    Actually mandated for aircraft: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22680/why-is-the-gear-handle-shaped-the-way-it-is https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22680/why-is-th... Also, the flaps lever is shaped like a small wing

Lio 2mo ago

Vintage nuclear plants are also infamously used as the canonical examples of bad UI in teaching. To paraphrase, the Three Mile Island Disaster happened because the operators couldn't discern the right red light in a sea of other lights and noise. https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nuclear-meltdown-9a6f762f6301 https://uxdesign.cc/three-mile-island-how-bad-ux-led-to-a-nu...

stymaar 2mo ago
The lessons of TMI have been learned though, the accident has been thoroughly investigated and that's the reason why it's now being discussed in class.
- Lio 2mo ago
  Of course but we're talking about vintage control room designs here, some of which predate that investigation, so it still seems relevant to point out.
  - stymaar 2mo ago
    AFAIK All of them have been retrofitted to take the lessons from TMI into account (I can't be sure about other countries, but in France it's definitely the case). And more importantly, the process around how you're supposed to take information from the controls during a crisis has been completely rethought, negating the issues found during TMI investigations.