Point it, call it, get it right (2018)
flightsafetyaustralia.com
flightsafetyaustralia.com
So every time, before I pull the trigger on the saw, I now touch the side of the safety glasses with my free hand and say out loud, "glasses on."
It felt super goofy at first, but after a while the safety check became part of the cadence and rhythm of turning on the saw. I feel much less likely to get a shard of wood or aluminum in my eye as long as I keep it up.
Done it everyday for years and I haven't left anything for about that long, it's pure auto pilot but I know straight away if I've forgotten something.
Silly the things that work sometimes.
Benefits:
* makes it more likely that I actually check, rather than just see what I expect to be the case
* co-pilot (or passengers!) can follow and verify what I'm doing
* for rarely used items (such as the alternate static air) it makes sure that I know where it is and don't have to fumble for it,
* I check how it "feels", so I could detect if something feels off (for example, throttle cables have occasionally broken loose from the control knob).
Several aircraft have come down just because crews "followed" the checklist, but didn't actually check.
* "After the aircraft was returned into service, the flight crew overlooked the pressurisation system state on three separate occasions: during the pre-flight procedure, the after-start check, and the after take-off check. During these checks, no one in the flight crew noticed the incorrect setting."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
* "The flight engineer was found to have failed to open the slat system bleed air valves as required on the pre-flight checklist."
A plane was painted and they failed to remove tape placed over the pilot tube (followed by a series of more bad choices after the plane took off).
In another case a military plane crashed after the flight engineer asked of they completed the landing checklist, they hadn't.
- Point It: Comment itself
- Call It: Comment explicates why potentially surprising or ambiguous thing that follows is the way it is.
- Get It Right: Eliminates potential error in future. (Or maybe helps spot one if explanation doesn't mesh with observed behavior.)
I was just reviewing a PR requesting clarification of some config settings and this article (which I looked at earlier) came to mind.
April 2018 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793
Calling out the checklist items lead both me and others to not take any shortcuts and never assume anything, also ensuring everyone is up to speed on what is about to happen.
I knew I was doing something right when, after intentionally leaving out a step to see if the apprentice was paying attention, I immediately got a good dressing down for my trouble.
Any UX experts in the house?
Congratulations, you named the very reason this technique is effective. I am not being facetious here.
The whole idea is to make the user perform disruptive, unfitting actions -both in the mind and physically- to improve chances of catching errors.
First, to both make the mind "shift gears", or perform a "context switch", with all the related cache-flushing and prediction-discarding and all that.
Second, to activate brain regions that were hitherto suspended; the ones associated with other senses and skills, in particular with vocal skills. Fleshing out abstract concepts into concrete words helps catch mistakes, just like putting abstract feature requests into concrete diagrams or code helps with catching errors or inconsistent expectations & assumptions.
I was thinking more about systems where no lives are at stake, and there I think there's no need to change modes, one can be DISRUPTIVE ENOUGH by using the same IO channels, which are quite flexible already.
It's an interesting example of how a seemingly "anti-usability" feature can actually help usability by preventing a wrong action.
Usability is mostly about making it easier to do the right thing, but sometimes making it harder to do the wrong thing helps too.
Plus the image of the silence in an office being punctuated by the occasional "DELETE" or "CONFIRM DROP TABLES" is hilarious.
I think that's almost useful, but better if it displays and asks you to echo a key fact that helps you recognize an action as important and/or confirm it's what you intended. Typing is fine; no need to do voice recognition.
* the number of machines your action will affect (for cluster management tools)
* the amount of traffic (qps, Mbps, etc) you'll affect (for routing changes, taking down servers, etc.)
* the amount of data you're deleting (some rounded form is fine) in files, bytes, database rows, etc.
* since someone else mentioned deleting a github repository: the repo's number of unique commits (ones not found in the repo it was forked from), issues, PRs, or even just stars/forks.
* the number of people you're adding to or removing from an ACL group / mailing list
For the "point it", it is a signification of proper intent, and it is what sliders, long click and triple fingers gestures are for: make it obvious you opt in for that feature.
E.G: the slider to open your phone so that it's not an accident, the long click to select an sms for deletion or the 3 fingers gesture to screen capture an android and not scroll.
Now, "calling" makes it sure you follow the mandatory step by step checks. So for a tool that requires it, it's easy to enforce programmatically. E.G: "multi part forms" or "first visit tour". It also lets other people survey you do the right thing. We have software rules for immediate feedback for that, and audit trails for the long term.
As for the "get it right", the "point it" is usually enough. If you want more, you have 5 strats:
- "are you sure" ?
- ctrl + z (possibly with history)
- "type here 'I confirm that I want deletion'
- please enter your password / totp code, etc
- proper permissions and checks
UX is more what used to be "graphic design", especially for marketing collateral, adapted to the more dynamic new media serving the same purposes.
I also do it for my car locks and windows to make sure they're closed and locked before leaving it. I'll make a point of it to touch the windows at the top edge and pull the handles.
They seem to point at one end of the pool and move their finger back and forth to the othe end of the pool.