How the design of a WWII plane led to the concept of user friendliness (2019)

Eventually, it turns out that pilots got confused as to which horn meant what. Something had to be done! The solution was ridiculously obvious - the horn sounds were speech saying what is wrong, like "stall! stall!" instead of "toot! toot!".

I think about that whenever I deal with a piece of machinery that emits random beeps to warn me about something. Like my car. Really, how hard is it to say "ya left ya lights on, ya fakking slagger!" so I would know what to do. At least my navigator says "recalculating" when I screw up, although I prefer "ya shoulda turned back yonder, ya witless wanker!"

Though I do wonder why they never put me in charge of the warning horn design.

The concept of "user friendliness" dates back a lot longer in ww2. During the industrial revolution industry went on a binge of making things more "user friendly" because it reduced human error and reduced downtime spent fixing machines and hosing former workers out of them. This is why, for example, on a lathe you traditionally have different shaped Z and X handles. It prevents you from crashing the machine by having your hand on the wrong handle when you go to make a rough adjustment.

A bored journalist could write the same article about user friendliness in the early industrial workplace, it would just be harder because there's no one big story to base your article around and the sources are harder to find.

I'm not aware of any major controller that has done this outside of the GameCube controller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_controller

This has become a real problem with newer cars where everything has been replaced by a touchscreen.

While reading I had a feeling Fitts was well known for something!

Also the greatest contribution towards reduced curiosity, inquisitiveness, and the hacker ethos.

Now that's something you don't see these days! I wonder what has slowed development so much, is it more complexity? It seems like a B-17 would be considered extremely complex in 1940.

If you wanted more on HOW they fixed the bomber. That part was fascinating.

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The MD-11 had a whole range of issues that added up to a poor design.

McDD did the development of the MD-11 on the cheap, led by their illustrious leader HS who did everything for minimum cost. It really needed a clean sheet design wing rather than just adapting the DC-10 one (which had never been got right in the first place and had excessive drag). But the money was not provided to do this.

Madcap idea was to reduce the size of the horizontal stabiliser (the "tail") compared to the DC-10 (despite the greater size), to reduce its drag. That makes it more difficult to control. To then overcome this a computer called the Longitudinal Stability Augmentation System was devised. We're speaking about 25-30 year old computer technology here. This was meant to enhance the way the tailplane worked. Another was that MD-11 pilots were to receive "additional training", that euphemism for handling something difficult and not intuitive.

Various outcomes ensued, particularly on landing. One is the MD-11 got the universal nickname of "The Scud" in the pilot world because "you never know where it's going to land" (remember the MD-11 came into service at the time of the first Gulf War). Hence the "additional training" which concentrates on landing aspects. The second was its propensity to then drag a wing in landings that became unstable. This revealed a further poor (and cheap) piece of wing design, as the wing will tend to break at the attachment, which then leads to the aircraft cartwheeling on touchdown. For a type where only 200 were built, the number which have been destroyed in these cartwheeling accidents (which have never once happened to their Boeing or Airbus rivals) is just unacceptable.

Now the MD-11 had other poor aspects. It didn't meet its performance guarantees, which allowed a number who ordered it to walk away from it. The Pratt & Whitney engined version in particular were unreliable. But more than anything else Boeing came up with an aircraft of remarkably similar size which used just two engines, not three, and yet delivered not only equal performance but everything the MD-11 had claimed to do but didn't. Boeing spent the R&D money on the 777, and got their return.

The worth of the MD-11 didn't quite fall to scrap value, however, as the three-engined approach made it suitable for those who move high weight a medium distance - the cargo airlines. And so FedEx, UPS, and some others would pay reasonable secondhand prices for them.

The original buyers thus sold them off, and bought 777s instead. Yes, there were a range of reasons. But in the background, quietly, the Chief Pilot is telling the Chairman of the Board "that thing is an accident waiting to happen for us". As, I regret to say, the cargo airlines continue to find out. I suspect the airline's insurers had something to say as well.

McDD just didn't get their Return on Investment, and the same thing happened with the MD90 and MD95, two more adaptations done on the cheap. Out of cash, they had to be absorbed by Boeing, and their vast assembly plant area in Long Beach is now condos and shopping malls. The most extraordinary part about this is that HS got himself accepted and pushed up to the very top of the Boeing hierarchy, where his extreme cost cutting some years ago did the same again - this time going for a real all-whiz new design, new materials, plus all subcontracted out (to the low bidder of course) rather than use the traditional workforce, etc,etc. Everything different, all at once. Roll on several years from his time there, and we all know what's happened to that new Boeing type, don't we ...... ?

As was said 20-30 years ago : "The best aircraft would be - designed by Lockheed, built by Boeing, sales & markeing team from McDonnell Douglas". Notable which of the three skills eventually came out on top.