Monthly Archives: September 2014

Healing chamber

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After Johnny was mistakenly reported as killed, the next time we see him he is in a healing chamber, submerged in green-underlit translucent fluid, resting on form-fitting clear plastic supports. He breathes through a tube, and a pair of small robot arms work busily to regenerate the damaged tissue in his leg.

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The main reason to discuss this chamber on a blog about interfaces is the material choice of the outside of the chamber. By being surrounded completely in a transparent material (glass? plexiglass? transparent aluminum?), it means that physicians can keep an eye on progress, and he can have visual interactions with visitors, as we see when Dizzy and Ace visit to share with him his mistaken death certificate (and for Dizzy to leave him a kiss.) Additionally it gives Johnny something to look at during the long hours of recuperation.

I’m not sure why the green light is necessary. The scene implies that it could serve some part in the healing process, but if not, I wonder if an amber light might signal a more human, nurturing warmth to Johnny and visitors. Narratively, you’d want to avoid anything too yellow or run the risk of the audience’s first interpretations drifting too far to the Andres-Serrano-esque.

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KLENDATHU CASUALTIES: 308,563

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The initial invasion of Klendathu is disastrous, and our hero Rico suffers a massive penetration wound in combat, with an Arachnid digging its massive, thorn-like pincer straight through his thigh.

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Rico is (spoiler alert) mistakenly reported as deceased. (There’s perhaps some argument for outfitting soldiers with networked biometrics so this sort of mistake can’t be made, but that’s another post.)

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After returning to dock, Ibanez hears reports about the military disaster, and sees a death roll scrolling by on a large wall display. Three columns of off-white names tick along, surname first, with an initialism indicating whether the soldier was killed, wounded, or missing in action. At the very top three legends summarize key information, WOUNDED IN ACTION 2,548; KILLED IN ACTION 205,515; and MISSING IN ACTION 105,753. Largest of all is the KLENDATHU CASUALTIES: 308,563. (I know, the math doesn’t add up. It’s possible I misread the blurry numbers.) But the screen could use some more deliberate graphic design.

While surveying the display, she remarks that, “It’s strange, there’s almost no wounded at all.” Though that information is there for her, the typography is hard to read. If this is in fact something that the viewer is meant to understand from looking at the screen, some color coding would help this be seen at a glance. In the comp below, you’ll see wounded are colored yellow, and it’s immediately apparent how few there are in this one screen.

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At the moment she approaches, the display is showing surnames that begin with “M”s. Ibanez approaches the display and types out Rico’s last name on the keyboard. The keys she touches indicates it’s a QWERTY layout.

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After hitting one of three large keys on the right hand side, the text scrolls quickly to the “R” surnames, and a big, red, all-caps overlay tells her that RICO, JOHN D. was Killed In Action. The text is set against a black rectangle with a pale blue glow. There is an identifier MI34-95 and—if the KIA was not enough of a clue—it also says DECEASED.

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After a moment, the text animates back into the list, with the black background, blue glow, and red text fading.

Though the presentation of this morbid information seems cold, it fits both the society and the fact that this is a military display, that has little time for emotional caretaking. Getting the information to the requester quickly and unambiguously—as this display does—fits the bill.

Rodger Young combat interfaces

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The interfaces aboard the Rodger Young in combat are hard to take seriously. The captain’s interface, for instance, features arrays of wireframe spheres that zoom from the bottom of the screen across horizontal lines to become blinking green squares. The shapes bear only the vaguest resemblance to the plasma bolts, but don’t match what we see out the viewscreen or the general behavior of the bolts at all. But the ridiculousness doesn’t end there.

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There’s also Barcalow’s screen, which has an amber graticule of the planet below them, and screen-green rounded-rectangles falling in soft arcs down the screen. These rectangles are falling far faster than the dropships (the only thing descending to the surface we see), and are falling in semi-random vectors across nearly half the arc of planet.

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Ibanez’ interface might make sense, since it shows the same spinning graticule of the planet below (though at a completely different orientation), with an overlaid shrinking rectangle. Maybe that’s the corridor of her optimal flight path? Maybe, it’s missing any 3D cues that might actually help with that task. Oh, but look! It also has the familiar spinning pizza graphic in the upper right.

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Granted, the dots might indicate plasma bolts from the bugs, and the falling rectangles might indicate the dropships trying to make their way to the surface, and the rectangle might indeed indicate the corridor of optimal flight path, but why on Earth is this information on separate screens being used by separate crew?

Imagine playing a videogame distributed among three players where one sees the goal, another sees the obstacles, and a third sees the other players. Sure the chaos of shouting instructions and information at each other might be fun, but you’d have little hope of success. Given these terrible screens, the main surprise is that anyone in the Federation survived the trip to the Bug Planet at all.

Addendum. I’d failed to notice these flailing bar charts that attract attention, but the type of which is too small to be read. Only adding to the pointless of the interfaces in this scene.

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Pillory

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After Rico’s fatal mistake in the live fire exercise, he is disgraced, relieved of squad command, and subject to corporal punishment. At the time of his punishment, the squads stand at attention around the square as Rico approaches the pillory at its center. Sergeant Zim pulls the restraints down from housings in the frame and loops them around Rico’s wrists. Then, he activates the interface, which is a hand-sized chrome button on the side of the frame.

With a single slap of the huge button, the restraints pull up and hold Rico’s arms at their fullest extents, simultaneously disabling him and giving some adolescents in the audience feelings they would not come to terms with for years.

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There’s a basic improvement that can be made, which is for the control to indicate the status. Yes, the status is apparent from a glance at the restraints. So it’s not an essential improvement. But as a general rule, you want to save the user from having to check some other place for the status of a system. Output where you input.

A more important improvement is related to the fact that this is a public event, a piece of authoritarian theater. With that in mind, a big knife switch with a loud thunk would add to the drama of the moment and make more of an impression on the audience. Which is the point. And, incidentally, it would solve the apparent-state problem from the prior paragraph, for a win-win all around. Except for the incredibly painful flogging that comes next.

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Nothing we can do about that, right? Go, fascism.

Live fire exercise

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After the capture the flag exercise, the recruits advance to a live ammo exercise. In this one, the recruits have weapons loaded with live ammo and surge in waves over embankments. They wear the same special vests they did in the prior exercise that detect when they are hit with a laser, flashing briefly with red lights on the front and back and thereafter delivering a debilitating shock to the wearer until the game is over. As they approach the next embankment, dummies automatically rise up and fire lasers randomly towards the recruits. The recruits shoot to destroy the dummies, making it safe to advance to the next embankment.

Three soldiers in tactical black uniforms and helmets running forward, holding weapons, with a military base in the background.
Three green toy soldiers are positioned on a platform, with one soldier firing a green laser beam. The background features a large structure with a curved roof and trees.
A scene featuring large metallic statues, one partially obscured by green smoke, set against a bright sky.
Two large green toy soldiers standing on a rooftop, with smoke and debris around them.

During the exercise, recruit Breckinridge’s helmet suffers a malfunction, and Rico foolishly helps him remove it to try and fix it. A nearby recruit is hit with a laser, who in her shock fires her weapon spastically and accidentally fatally shoots Breckinridge in the head.

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There was some good discussion on the War Game Equipment post about whether or not practicing against human-like targets is warranted and wise. Instead, we can focus on how this happened in the first place.There are so many technological options.

  • Rubber bullets first.
  • The weapons should know when they are aiming at allies and not fire but register the shot.
  • The weapons should know when their soldier is shocked, and lock up so they can’t fire. After all, the shock is not a common thing to happen on the field, so why ask soldiers to practice controlling a weapon during it.
  • The helmet should know when it’s unbuckled on the field, and shut down the exercise on the spot.

These devices can be unlocked after the soldiers prove themselves competent with these constraints. Any good learning design should ease learners into skills that could prove fatal.

War game equipment

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The recruits practice their war skills with capture the flag games. Each participant carries visible-laser weapons (color coded to match the team color) to fire at members of the other team, and wears a special vest that detects when it is hit with a laser, flashing briefly with red lights on the front and back and thereafter delivering a debilitating shock to the wearer until the game is over.

A group of soldiers in futuristic uniforms and helmets, carrying weapons, engaged in a tactical drill or training exercise in an outdoor setting.
A group of soldiers in futuristic uniforms and helmets engaged in combat on a grassy battlefield, with laser fire visible in the background.

The interface is pretty solid. It presents a real but non-fatal risk. The lights on the vest sends a quick and unambiguous signal to others that stands in for the…um…otherwise gory signal they would receive in the field when a solider was shot down. The weapons are very similar to what they will be using in the field, so it’s good basic psychomotor practice for using them. And capture the flag is a simple, focused game that stresses field tactics along with mastery of physical skills.

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The main reason this isn’t perfect is that these recruits are not going to be facing other humans in the field, but rather giant and ferocious space arachnids. The differences aren’t superficial. Bugs behave differently. They’re of a different size. Their distance weapons in the field are ropy, arcing jets of biological napalm rather than perfectly straight beams of light.

Certainly, what is being learned here is more abstract than practical, and might be a stepping stone to games with more verisimilitude, but if you only had a short time to train soldiers for real-world combat, I would structure even early games to be more like the real world.

Federal Services Communiqué

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Live video in Starship Troopers works a little bit differently than video messages. When he wants to call his parents in Buenos Aires, he somehow sets up the call (it’s offscreen, so we really don’t know how he does it). When the call goes through, a soldier comes in to the barracks to tell Rico that it’s going through, and then tells him to take it. You know, three feet away. At the end of the barracks. That they’re currently in. In a giant wall display. So…short improvement #1: Maybe just let it ring with Rico’s name on it rather than require a communication officer to wander around the barracks just telling soldiers to take five steps in a certain direction.

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He approaches a semi-public wall-mounted screen on the wall of the barracks and presses one of the seven metal buttons. The CGA, 16-color screen tells him it is CONNECTING YOUR CALL as a dashed, yellow progress bar zips across the bottom. Second aside: The private video call screen only had five buttons. This is the same except for the two extra silver pushbuttons. What are the extra two here for?

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Close-up of a woman's face on a television screen, expressing emotion.
A split-screen image showing a smiling woman on the left and a surprised man on the right, both appearing on a large monitor.
A man in a dark jacket stands facing a screen showing a woman with dark hair and makeup, who is engaged in conversation.

When the call is connected, he sees a full-screen image of his mother. Though no camera mechanism is visible, he is able to look and talk directly at her eyes. When she realizes it’’s Johnny calling, she calls out to her husband, and the screen automatically splits in two so that both can talk to him at once. Unfortunately we don’t see how this happens from the Dad’s point of view, because it’s instantaneous and seamless. We don’t see him moving a hand back from an interface or anything. Did he just happen to be in front of the video intercom? Or are there lots of screens everywhere around their house? Or can any surface act as a camera/screen? How did the mom signal that she wanted to share the call rather than pass it along?

It happens so seamlessly that I can’t help but think it’s automatic or possibly…agentive. But it has to be conjecture, because it all happens out of sight.

The call is cut off and after a moment of static, a screen tells him that the transmission was terminated in all-caps text that blinks between black and yellow. A female voice confirms by saying ““Your transmission has been terminated due to atmospheric interference. Please try your call again later.”” Then the screen returns to its idle status with a Federal logo.

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Third aside: Any system error should explain its status unambiguously. This implies that the system is still working, but there was a problem with something on the far end. We know that’s not the case. It wouldn’t suit the narrative, but this should read something more like “SYSTEM DOWN.”

Fed Communication Service

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When they are in basic training, Carmen and Johnny exchange video messages to stay in touch. Videos are recorded locally to small discs and sent to the other through the Fed post. Carmen has her own computer station in her berth for playing Johnny’’s messages. Johnny uses the single player available on the wall in the barracks. Things are different in the roughnecks than on the Rodger Young.

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To play her message, he inserts the small compact disk she sent him into a vertical holder, closes the hinged cover, and presses the rightmost of five similar metal buttons below the screen to play it. After the (sad breakup) message is done, the player displays an “END OF MESSAGE” screen that includes the message ID. Three lights sit in the lower left hand part of the interface. An amber light glows in the lower right near text reading, “P3.” There is a large dial on the left (a frustum of a cone, to be all geometric about it) with some debossed shapes on it that is likely a dial, but we never see these controls in use. In fact, there’s not a lot of interaction there at all for us to evaluate.

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Usually you’d expect a dial to operate volume (useful in the noisy narracks), with controls for play, pause, and some controls for either fast forward / reverse, or non-linear access of chapters in the message. The number of controls certainly could accommodate either of those structures, even if it was an old two-button model of play and stop rather than the more modern toggle. Certainly these could use better affordance, as they do not convey their behavior at this distance. Even at Rico’s distance, it’s faster for him to be able to see than to read the controls.

We could also ask what good the message ID is since it’s on screen and not very human-readable or human-memorable, but it does help remind Rico that his messages are being monitored by the fascism that is the Federation. So that’s a helpful reminder, if not useful data.

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For the larger interaction, most of the complexities in sending a message—initiating a recording, editing, encoding, specifying a recipient, and sending it—are bypassed offscreen by the physical medium, so it’s not worth speculating on how well this is from a larger standpoint. Of course we could ding them for not thinking that video could be sent faster and cheaper digitally via interstellar transmission than a fragile little disc, but that’s a question for which we just don’t have enough information. (And in which the filmmakers would have had a little trouble explaining how it wasn’t an instant video call.)

Tattoo-o-matic

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After he is spurned by Carmen and her new beau in the station, Rico realizes that he belongs in the infantry and not the fleet where Carmen will be working. So, to cement this new identity, Rico decides to give in and join his fellow roughnecks in getting matching tattoos.  The tattoos show a skull over a shield and the words “Death from Above”. (Incidentally, Death From Above is the name of the documentary detailing the making of the film, a well as the title of a hilarious progressive metal video by the band Holy Light of Demons. You should totally check it out.) 

To get the tattoo, Johnny lies back in a chair, and a technician of some sort works briefly at waist-high controls beneath a nearby screen. Then the technician walks away while Johnny’s tattoo is burned with blue lasers onto his arm.

A man seated in a futuristic setting is receiving a tattoo from a robotic arm. The tattoo features the word 'DEATH' surrounded by a star emblem. A computer screen in the background displays various graphs and a logo related to the tattooing process.

At the upper left corner of the screen a display reads SELECTED above the image being burned into Rico’s arm. (With white indicating no color.) Beneath it, is a square divided into four quadrants is filled with unintelligible numbers scrolling along, above the words AUTOMATIC SEQUENCE CONTROL.  Down the center of the screen beneath the word LASERS is a column filled with boxes showing sine waves and their corresponding frequencies from the shorter blue wavelengths moving down to yellow, red, and finally a double-lined white waveform. At the right of the screen is a large screen-green rectangular grid on which the selected pattern wipes in from top to bottom as the corners blink in red and yellow.

There are two main problems that are apparent in the scene.

1. We don’t need the technician

What does the technician do? Essentially, he presses a button and then walks away. Even as Johnny’s friends rush him out of the room in celebration, no one stops them to pay, which seem to indicate that everything has already been taken care of before he sits in the chair. Also, we notice that Johnny’s arm has not been strapped down, wrapped in healing bandages, or secured in any way. He stays relatively still throughout the procedure, but it seems a safe assumption that not all customers will be stoic soldier types who are able to sit still while their arm is literally charred by lasers in front of their own eyes. The machine must be able to compensate for movement, either by adjusting the lasers or shutting off completely, so, again, no technician is necessary. Also, when a fellow roughneck pours liquor over Johnny’s arm while his skin is in the process of being vaporized by lasers, the liquor doesn’t ignite in a horrifying fireball as we might expect, indicating that the lasers must have scaled back their intensity just in the nick of time—this is a pretty context-aware system with a lot of built-in error correction. Maybe they’re there for insurance purposes but given what we see in the scene, they serve no real purpose. Assuming the Death from Above design was one already in the machine, he could have completed the entire transaction himself from start to liquor-soaked finish.

A group of four individuals showcasing matching tattoos on their arms that read 'DEATH FROM ABOVE', with decorative graphic elements around the text.

2. The screen doesn’t make sense

As the image of the selected design scans into view on the right side of the screen, we can see that there is no exact correlation between the parts of the image on screen, and the parts of the image on-skin. The wireframe wipes in from top-to-bottom. The tattoo is finishing up in the middle. The tattoo is already 90% complete when the animation begins. The blinking numbers, the wiggling sine waves. It doesn’t mean anything and isn’t useful. So all told, the information on the screen initially appears complex, but given the total automation of the system it’s actually quite simple: Here’s what’s happening, and here’s the progress.

But maybe it’s not for the technician

Maybe it’s not for the technician at all. You can imagine that while having your skin seared by painful, painful lasers, all that fuigetry would be a welcome distraction, and a progress bar would be a welcome reassurance that it won’t last forever. With this in mind, the main problem with the screen is that it should be facing the customer, who is the real user.