The whole account is mixture of bad design decisions mixed with human error so easily brought about by panic and stress, which is exactly what happens in a crash, of course. Gruber quotes this section, which is the biggest indictment:

A minute after the autopilot disconnected, Bonin muttered something odd: “I’m in TOGA, huh?” TOGA stands for Take Off, Go Around. Bonin was apparently so disorientated that he believed he was operating at low altitude, in a similar situation to a pilot having to abort a landing approach before circling for a second attempt. Standard procedure on abandoning a landing is to set engines to full power and tilt the aircraft upwards at 15 degrees. But Flight AF447 was not a few hundred feet above a runway. Within a minute it had soared to 38,000 feet in air so thin that it could climb no more. As forward thrust was lost, downward momentum was gathering. Instead of the wings slicing neatly through the air, their increasing angle of attack meant they were in effect damming it. In the next 40 seconds AF447 fell 3,000 feet, losing more and more speed as the angle of attack increased to 40 degrees. The wings were now like bulldozer blades against the sky. Bonin failed to grasp this fact, and though angle of attack readings are sent to onboard computers, there are no displays in modern jets to convey this critical information to the crews. One of the provisional recommendations of the BEA inquiry has been to challenge this absence.

But there are other interface problems too, including the shift from analogue to digital in which the natural affordances of dual controls are lost:

Like all other aircraft in the modern Airbus range the A330 is controlled by side sticks beside pilots’ seats, which resemble those on computer game consoles. These side sticks are not connected to the aircraft control surfaces by levers and pulleys, as in older aircraft. Instead commands are fed to computers, which in turn send signals to the engines and hydraulics. This so-called fly-by-wire technology has huge advantages. Doing away with mechanical connections saves weight, and therefore fuel. There are fewer moving components to go wrong, the slender electronic wiring and computers all have multiple back‑ups, and the onboard processors take much of the workload off pilots. Better still, they are programmed to compensate for human error.

The side sticks are also wonderfully clever. Once a command is given, say a 10-degree left turn, the pilot can let the stick go and concentrate on other issues while the 10-degree turn is perfectly maintained. According to Stephen King of the British Airline Pilots’ Association, it’s an admired and popular design. “Most Airbus pilots I know love it because of the reliable automation that allows you to manage situations and not be so fatigued by the mechanics of flying.”

But the fact that the second pilot’s stick stays in neutral whatever the input to the other is not a good thing. As King concedes: “It’s not immediately apparent to one pilot what the other may be doing with the control stick, unless he makes a big effort to look across to the other side of the flight deck, which is not easy. In any case, the side stick is held back for only a few seconds, so you have to see the action being taken.”

Read the full account on the Telegraph’s website here.

All the classics are in there, including ‘Market research uses hundreds of people. How come you can get answers with just 5?’ ‘Our product is aimed at everyone, so we can use ourselves as users.’ ‘Users don‘t know what they want’ ‘Apple doesn‘t do user research so why should we?’ ‘Our agency does all of this for us.’ Dave Travis counters each of these. Here is the one explaining market research:

Market research is based on opinions. Opinions vary from person to person. It would be ludicrous for a political pollster to sample 5 people in an attempt to predict an election. And even if we take a single person, his or her opinions will change over time, depending on what’s in the news, the other experiences they have, and how we phrase the question.

In contrast, user experience research is based on behaviour. Behaviour turns out to be remarkably consistent from person to person. For example, if you watch 5 people approach a door, and 4 of them attempt to pull it when the door needs to be pushed, you know there’s something wrong with the design. You don’t need to randomly sample 370 people to draw this conclusion. You observe that the door has a pull handle, and it’s probably that that’s causing the problem. So you replace the pull handle with a push panel, and see if you’ve fixed the problem.

User experience researchers can get away with small samples because they are looking for behavioural insights, not opinions.

Read the full piece over at Userfocus: How to tell managers they’re wrong about UX research and still get hired.

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Image CC-BY-2.0 by KungPauCajun

Despite the Evening Standard’s awful subtitle of “The iMan cometh” the article contains some great quotes and insights applicable to all designers:

Most of our competitors are interesting [sic] in doing something different, or want to appear new – I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us – a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. Committees just don’t work, and it’s not about price, schedule or a bizarre marketing goal to appear different – they are corporate goals with scant regard for people who use the product.

One of the things we’ve really learned over the last 20 years is that while people would often struggle to articulate why they like something – as consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed. It’s one of the thing we’ve found really encouraging.

What is more difficult is when you are intrigued by an opportunity. That, I think, really exercises the skills of a designer. It’s not a problem you’re aware or, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions, what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? This creates opportunities that could replace entire categories of device, rather than tactically responding to an individual problem. That’s the real challenge, and that’s what is exciting.

Read the complete interview here.