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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

It was definitely more of a stick than carrot situation.

The issue with multiple dialogs is that the operator could claim that they were confused with conflicting wording and the implications of things like "Confirm" vs "Cancel" in certain contexts of use. This provides some degree of cover for moving with less care. With no dialog at all, the operator has nothing to point to but their own actions. There is nothing to hide behind.

The fact that this was also a heavily multi-lingual/cultural environment amplified the effect of poorly designed safety mechanisms dramatically.

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Confirm/Cancel (like Yes/No) for dialog buttons has been known to be confusing and detrimental for decades now. The button names should always describe action to be taken, not a response to the text above.

My point is that the operator may be genuinely confused by a poor interaction model. Removing that interaction model entirely is certainly an option, but it's not clear that comparing "no dialog" vs "bad dialog" is a strong argument for "dialogs bad, better to have none" - you don't have data for the "good dialog" case, which may be better still.

I remember being confused as a kid by "Yes/No/Cancel" when the computer asked "Do you want to save the changes...?" because I couldn't figure out whether "Cancel" meant "Yes" or "No" and why on earth would one have a third option. I then realized it meant to "cancel" my intention to close the file. I had been confused because I thought it meant to "cancel" the computer's intention to ask me.

Also, I was that obnoxious kid who, after asking someone a yes/no question, used to add "Yes/No/Cancel" (probably to highlight my perceived absurdity of that button).

Like the "Cancel subscription" dialog with options "Cancel" and "Cancel"...

UX Design is hard...

Having worked in this space for over a decade (but not in the last 7 years), your comments surprise me. Is this a smaller operation perhaps?

In general, operator UX (HMI, human machine interface), is a an area that’s well researched and more or less standardised in recent times (ISA101). Abnormal Situation Management (ASM), Situational Awareness, automatic alarm suppression for “consequential alarms”, High Performance Graphics (basically everything grey except the stuff that matters). If your Engineers do a good job; the operators can do a good job.

Removing all interlocks sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me. Interlocks are there to prevent the mis-click pouring molten steel on peoples heads. If you have a nice boring standardized ASM HMI, operators can’t “hide behind them”. Every operation is the same.

Really interesting, thanks.

Kind of reminds me of parallels to not wearing a seatbelt making someone drive with more care.

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