Set Phasers on Stun
Steven M. Casey
“Something was not right. Something REALLY was not right…”
What I like
Fantastic stories about design gone wrong
The book is written with a lot of empathy for those experiencing the problems- you can feel their pain
Makes complex design issues simple to understand
What’s missing
It’s vague in a good and leaves a lot to the imagination, leaving out practical insights
Just wish there were more of these stories, especially in the digital age
Key Topics
Design, Usability, Ethical issues, User research, Human factors
Review
“Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design Technology, and Human Error” is a book I have heard about in design circles for many years. Its name was funny to me and I frankly never took it seriously until deciding to pick it up. It was hard to get, and had to be ordered through a third party on Amazon for a pretty penny. What I found in this book is one of the best design books I’ve read, and it rarely explicitly discusses design. The book is written expertly with careful intention to paint scenes, characters, and things clearly for the reader’s mind so that we can sit back and enjoy the part of each story that really matters- the mysteries behind what went wrong. In that sense, some of the stories end on a bad note- and that was sometimes hard to handle.
The book is a collection of short stories. Think “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” meets “The Design of Everyday Things”. It wraps the thick narrative design of a mystery novel with a bow of design. The book is expertly written with careful attention provided to details that impact the overall narrative, without ever making the reader feel dumb. Coursing through this book I navigated domains of aerospace, military devices, gastronomy, and more, and rarely felt lost. Some stories are two pages, and some are ten to twenty, but the length doesn’t really matter because each feels as impactful as the last. Some stories were gripping, tragic, mysterious, and had me questioning questions and moving through page to page sometimes on the edge of my seat. Casey’s writing is consistent in this regard, I understood the pace of the stories, but not once did I feel bored. I’m confident this is a book I could share with a non-designer and they would enjoy it and learn a little about design all the way. For a designer, it’s a book that reminded me of a reason behind why I do what I do.
Learnings
Testing products can save lives
The precise conditions under which the control would be used had not been considered during design and construction
Don’t redesign a fighter plane’s instrument panel in the middle of a war
Don’t try to override executive function
Give hierarchy to the most used functions, and place critical but secondary functions behind walls
Provide signifiers to experts about big shifts in status from other sources (e.g. the helmsman should have seen the ship was in Control)
Often times people become obsessed with money, or alternative facts, as a researcher it’s good to focus on the how and why
Don’t lay off your maintenance staff who understand your product way better, or, don’t rely solely on your gut when technical knowledge is required
Design for actual max/min values, and provide signifiers when things are dangerously low
Test your product for false-positive scenarios, otherwise users may become conditioned to ignore problems
Design features can be used as hacks or workarounds
“The computers were meant to take over many of the most demanding trading tasks. But when all was said and done, the powerful computers had increased, rather than decreased, the workload for countless people including Michael
When a big decision has to be made, make very sure to have the user confirm their choice. Including any integers, symbols, or any other big things. Especially if these decisions have second order effects on people other than the user. Like a plastic shield over a big red shiny button.
Help user recognize and recover from errors, do research to learn how these errors might happen.
Make instructions simple and clear.
When precise measurement is required, put knowledge into the world to help users do it right
Make instructions readable in the language that they were designed for
People may want to use a system in a way other than is unintended for their any reason that benefits them
Don’t allow key components that should not under any circumstance be modified or moved
Label key components accordingly so that people know what they do
Do research within context of use to understand potential design risks due to context