
Ballistic Missile Alert System Redesigned - nomanda
https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/redesigning-hawaiis-emergy-alert-interface-in-the-open-91c6318a7045?m
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techjuice
Good points and prototype design. Things of such importance should be designed
to help remove as much human error as possible.

For example, the big red button in modern data centers, they are purposely
behind a somewhat weighted glass or plastic casing with clear instructions on
it's purpose that has to be manually opened and lifted in order to be pushed.
It is a button that cannot be accidentally pushed, unless there is no casing
which would be a major design, engineering, management and implementation flaw
just waiting to accidentally be pushed.

There should be extremely high standards of ease of use and good UX/UI any
emergency system, it should remove the capability of accidentally being
engaged in a live environment that goes out to the public. If that system is
engaged then there should be no doubt it is a true emergency and the
individual or individuals operating the system engaged it on purpose.

For testing, there should be a clear and informational way to know the system
is in testing mode versus production mode. Many experienced engineers have
seen what happens when test and production are not separated properly (junior
engineer wipes out or causes a disruption in production by properly following
a documented process that should have been updated to insure that production,
test, staging and dev cannot talk/hurt each other).

It is good that this large issue is being addressed, and I hope the entire
government takes steps to improve interface design to the emergency systems as
when they are needed it should be extremely simple for the operator to insure
they are not making any mistakes and should be very difficult for an accident
to occur.

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dullite
Is it really true that something solely based in Hawaii can raise the alarm? I
would think there would be several systems involved (e.g. NORAD). How is it
that this could be the result of a bad interface and a "fat finger"? I know...
malice vs. incompetence... but in this case the incompetence seems a bit too
unlikely / too much. I think it is either incompetence at a larger scale, or
it is a hack... but perhaps I am placing too much faith in our national
missile defense systems.

