

Boeing right's a wrong: The flight attendant button - digamber_kamat
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/us-airshow-button-odd-idUSTRE75K4AM20110621?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FoddlyEnoughNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Oddly+Enough%29&utm_content=Twitter

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cmsj
"rights". It was even right there in the headline of the article!

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btilly
Yay.

Now can I have a similar button in a restaurant? So I don't have to have my
conversation interrupted by people coming by to ask me how dinner is going,
and do I can get issues (like running out of water) addressed promptly.

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alex_martin
A restaurant the runs like an Amazon warehouse? Where the staff are controlled
by a little robotic handset.

"turn left and pick up credit card terminal. Then go to table 32." "say: 'how
was your food today sir?'

Sounds fucking awful even if it does get you 10s faster service.

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enko
You basically just described Manna: <http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

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henrikschroder
Welcome to The Culture.. er.. I mean The Australia Project.

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bartl
That's what you get when designers feel obliged to uniformize a user
interface, thus, that buttons _must_ look very alike, irrespective of their
purpose, and be placed in a group.

I bet quite a few websites and softwares have similar problems.

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valisystem
Bad design comes in many ways, mainly along the two axis of aesthetics and
relevancy. This is a great example where the designer dismissed relevancy to
improve aesthetics easily.

You've seen this in many average products, but I feel I have to insist that it
is not due to design in general, but more due to the average designer lacking
the talent to solve the two axis equation properly.

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alex_martin
Aircraft must be the antithesis to Agile work and continuous iteration. It's a
completely different mindset to anything I've done. Imagine it: 'I pushed a
new flight yoke to 737 v2.199. It crashed so I've fixed the bug in v2.200. '

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lucasjung
It depends on the type of aircraft, it's intended purpose, and how mature the
design is. My current work involves developmental testing of aircraft, and one
of the programs I'm working on is using spiral development. The iteration
isn't continuous, and it's not nearly as fast as software, but it's pretty
fast compared to other programs.

Also, even the more stable and mature aircraft designs get relatively frequent
software updates, and there is a _lot_ of software in aircraft these days. The
interesting part is where the faster iteration process of software development
meets the slower process of aircraft development. The software developers are
constantly iterating just like you would expect them to, and then every so
often spin off a version for release on the side. That release version goes
through extensive testing (mostly regression testing to make sure nothing that
used to work is now broken) before it ever makes it onto an aircraft. Usually
a few fixes are required as well. While all of that is happening, there are
still people working on the next version.

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vivek47
I have always wondered why it doesn't work like this: Press the button once to
call. Press it again to cancel the call (if it was pressed by mistake).

With a firmware update, this solution can even be retro-fitted to existing
planes.

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MattLaroche
On most planes I've flown on that is exactly how it works. The flight
attendant comes by and presses it again when he gets to the row.

Some others have call and cancel buttons separately in either remote controls
or armrest built controls.

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GiraffeNecktie
It's (still) in an awkward position for some of the people who might need it
the most. My elderly mother, for example, doesn't have the range of motion in
her arms to reach up that high.

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GiraffeNecktie
Wow. Interesting that I was downvoted. I wonder why?

