book that I have bought fromthe book fair , I noticed this story on the user interface chapter, so I liked to share it with you to show how much critical the GUI can be , and here it is ...
On 8 January 1989 , British Midlands Flight 92 had just taken off from Heathrow , heading towards Belfast. Unfortunatly the left engine started smoke and lost power. A Boeing 737 is capable of flying with just one engine. However, the cockpit indicators did not give a strong enough indication about which engine was in trouble; they had no way of visually checking the engines from the cockpit, and the cabin crew did not inform them that smoke and flames had been seen from the left engine. The pilots mistakenly thought the right engine had the problem and shut is down instead !!
Flying with one engine shut down and the other in trouble, the palne crashed while attempting to make an emergency landing. Of 126 people on board, 47 died. Many peeople belive that an improved cockpit user interface could have avoided this disaster.
For more details, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNmbT1BAptg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_Air_Disaster#Shutting_down_the_wrong_engine
1 comment:
hehe,I can not believe .
But I am fully agree with you , the interface (GUI) is definitely important , critical and I believe that building easy to use application with clear and understandable/presenter interface is critical requirement.
And that not just to avoid the disasters but also for customer satisfaction . ex.why Linux was not popular like windows the last years ?
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