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.

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.

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