
Ask HN: Any resources on the best physical UI? - lokiju
For example, car interiors, fighter jet interiors, destroyer interiors. What are the best practices for physical interaction with a machine?
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Jtsummers
I can't speak to best practices, but I can to worst. _Tragic Design_ [0] is a
text I've recommend to others in the past. It's important to not just know
_what_ to do, but also _what not_ to do and _why_. I haven't reread it since
it came out of beta, I read it a few months before it was published and found
it to be good. It gave a lot of examples of poor design decisions with
physical systems and analyses of how they led to accidents (or near
accidents).

Two examples that have stuck with me:

Descent angle/rate shown and entered on the same display, the mode determined
whether you were entering an angle in degrees or a rate of change in altitude.
The difference in display, aside from the mode indicator (a single light) was
a comma (rate) or decimal (angle). Entering an incorrect value because the
pilot thought it was in a different mode resulted in a much faster descent and
accident. Imagine this on a simple LED display (but smaller than your standard
alarm clock):

    
    
      .
      1,000
    
      
      1.000
    

And it's not the only control or display in view and those two numbers mean
_very_ different things.

Another was a control for a ferry boat with two engines. Depending on which
engine, the control for engine speed could mean different things depending on
which engine was the active engine. Visual aid:

    
    
        |========|
       X          X
       1          2
    

If engine 1 is active, pushing the speed control away may mean go to the
right, if engine 2 is active it means go to the left. The indicator to know
which engine was active (as I recall) was the same uniform sized small
indicator used for every system status indicator. Forgetting that they had
switched engines (to "pull" the ferry to its destination versus "push", due to
damage or other issue with the desired engine) the operator accelerated rather
than decelerated at the destination.

[0] [https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tragic-
design/978149192...](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tragic-
design/9781491923603/)

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kosmodrom
I can recommend you book Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

