When a user interface costs lives
Found this interesting story about the USS Vincennes, which in 1998 shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, killing 290 people.
Relevance? One of the contributing factors was a bad user interface to the Aegis system:
Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes' Aegis system in 1988, killing 290 people. The error was initially attributed to operator error, but later some experts attributed the incident to the poor design of the Aegis user interface.
That quote is of Steve McConnell, again from Wikipedia.
Other references:
- Overwhelmed by Technology: How did user interface failures on board the USS Vincennes lead to 290 dead? by Luke Swartz.
- User Interface Risks by Matt Welsh.