Hi Grant --
Yes, pushing the wrong button is an error on the part of the user --
'cockpit error', as you put it. One of the characteristics
of man-machine interfaces that folks find "easy to use" vs "tricky" or "fussy"
is the degree of tolerance for, and ability to
recover from, human error.
A general "undo" button can work, but is more difficult to design. This is
because of the large scope of the design task. One
has to consider what pushing the "undo" button does in relation to every other
man-machine event (buttons, menu selections, etc) in
the system.
As an example, what does the "undo" button perform, if the previous event
was that the user pushed the NR button to turn the NR
on? Does Undo turn NR back off, and thus become another way of reversing the
sense of a push-push button. ("Push-push" means push
to switch on, push to turn off.) If the immediately previous action was that
the user turned the VFO A knob, does Undo crank back
the frequency change? If so, how far back?
It's certainly feasible to have a very good, generic Undo button. But one
just has to take the time to work through its
implications and then do some testing with real users to make sure the design
choices were good ones.
Stepping up one conceptual level, a good design would either have (a) a
generic Undo function, or (b) a consistent way of
invoking the Undo capability for specific functions. Approach (b) requires
nearly the same level of careful thought as (a).
And now I'm sure folks on the reflector have read more than they care to
about the nuances of man-machine interface design!! I
apologize if this has gone beyond entertaining...
-- Eric K3NA
-----Original Message-----
From: tentec-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com]On Behalf Of Grant Youngman
Sent: 2004 July 11 15:50
To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: RE: [TenTec] Re: An exampleof changing
Orionfirmwaretomeetexpectations
On 11 Jul 2004 at 13:47, Eric Scace K3NA wrote:
> Hi Grant --
>
> Yes, you're missing a point which I didn't make clear.
>
> Of course overwriting the B VFO frequency is the desired result when one
> purposely pushes the A>B button. The human factors
> issues come in to play because we make mistakes. What if one didn't intend
> to push that particular button?
I don't disagree that pushing the wrong button inadvertently is one of
the things that most of us do from time to time.
GUess I see that as a cockpit issue -- unless we endow the radio
with a generic "undo" button to correct out mistakes.
The ultimate solution, of course, is that the radio respond not to
what we do, but what we INTENDED to do. Let's see if Gary can
handle THAT firmware update :-)
Grant/NQ5T
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