Rodger Young combat interfaces

23 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pillory

18 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

StarshipTroopers-Whipping-Post02

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.

StarshipTroopers-Whipping-Post09

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

16 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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.

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

11 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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

8 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

5 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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.

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.

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

3 Sep 2014 by Christopher Noessel

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.

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.

Jump Ball scoreboard

28 Aug 2014 by Christopher Noessel

[Editor’s Note: Knowing nothing of sportsball, I invited fellow designer Brendan Kneram to bring his considerable skills in both sportsball of design to write a review of this scoreboard seen in the movie. -Chris]

The Big Hurrah for students before they graduate Starship High is a game of Jump Ball followed by a Jump Prom. For the contemporary viewer, Jump Ball strongly resembles American Football with the occasional gravity-defying maneuver added for good measure. This similarity is further emphasized upon closer inspection of the scoreboard, making its first appearance when Johnny Rico finishes his first of two scoring plays (I hesitate to call it a “touchdown” because Rico is awarded only five points instead of the six given in American Football). The first impression is of its underwhelming high school aesthetic—it looks like something found in the 20th century, not the 23rd—and even the information conveyed is insufficient to make sense of the sport. It’s possible that the threat of invasion by giant killer-insects caused some sort of civilization-wide regression in scoreboards, but I do find it hard to believe that such an advanced civilization would fail to innovate anything for the design of a physical scoreboard in over three hundred years.

While it’s true the most important question, “Who’s winning?” is answered by the “Home” and “Guests” scores, the viewer is given very little else of interest.

For example, we know that there is 2:46 left in the fourth period, but until the game is over there is no way of knowing if there is a 5th period. This is a principle that can be found in many of the scoreboards of today: show it whenever possible. Display the periods as four lights that progressively turnoff (it also seems odd that they’re “periods” and not “quarters”). You can often see this progressive-turnoff on hockey scoreboards for its three periods, balls and strikes in baseball, and timeouts in basketball. It’s an efficient and fast way to communicate both the total as well as the remaining amount at once.

Another question that an observant viewer might have is: how was it possible that the teams arrived at scores of 46 and 43, two numbers not divisible by five? When the scoreboard reflects a change of score, there is no indication of previous scores. It would be helpful to not only know who is winning, but also the two team’s trajectories. Did the “Guests” score all of their points in the fourth period? Was either team able to score more than five points in a single play? Something of a sparkline would give a hint of not just the status of the game, but its momentum.

In addition to displaying scoring information, there is no specific context provided for the action on the field. Where is the ball? Is it at a specific location on the field? Conveniently, each team scores on a single play, so there is no opportunity to see how the scoreboard might handle a second play or a change of possession.

Had the designers taken a few more cues from scoreboards of today, the action on the field may have been more engaging. Although who knows, maybe the best scoreboard action is happening on HUDs via ocular implants…

News and Information

21 Aug 2014 by Christopher Noessel

A man and a woman standing at a transport hub display, with the woman interacting with a machine and the screen showing welcome information for Federal Transport Hub 39.

When Ibanez and Rico are in Federal Transport Hub 39 set to leave for Basic Training, we see Ibanez use a public kiosk for news and information. To do so she approaches a kiosk that tells her to “LOG IN,” and she slips her paper ticket into a slot just above waist height, and types on an adjacent small keyboard, mounted at a slight angle for easy typing. The kiosk reads the ticket and displays her surname on the screen.

A man and a woman stand in front of a digital display at a transport hub, with the screen showing 'Welcome to Federal Transport Hub 39' and travel information.

Next the camera faces her as she types, so we don’t see what she’s typing or the information display during use. In fact, the only thing that can be commented on is the workflow and ergonomics.

The workflow doesn’t make sense

The dialogue doesn’t hint at what information she’s getting, but I imagine it’s the most basic of the sort of information that one needs at a station, i.e. where do I go/what do I do next to get to where I need to go? For that, why would she need to type anything in at all?

If the information is available before her ticket is sent, it should be on the ticket.
If the information is only available on arrival, some token, like a flight number, should be on the ticket that she can check a public transport timetable. Having passengers log in for this information creates an unnecessary bottleneck where people might need to queue up, risking delays and causing flow problems in the space.
If she’s letting her flight know that she’s arrived, it should be passive like environmental retina scanning or the identification should be very very fast, like a barcode on the ticket that can be read nearly instantaneously.
If she’s not announcing her arrival, she should not have to login for information.
If it’s a crazy complicated path to the platform, the kiosk should print a map and route for her on the ticket itself.

That display sucks

The screen should fit the information. If the information is meant to be private, to announce arrival, the screen should be small and personal. If the information is meant to be public, it should be large and readable from 3-5 meters away. This combination of personal information on a giant screen makes for poor ergonomics at the very least.

But it fits narratively

We should remember though that this is a pointedly fascist society, and there is not a reasonable expectation of privacy. As we saw with the Grade Board, having one’s private information displayed for all the world to see is Just The Way It Is Here.

It’s possible that the bad workflow is also meant to describe a society caught up in pointless inefficient bureaucracy, but there isn’t a lot of other evidence that this is the case.

Compartment 21

14 Aug 2014 by Christopher Noessel

After the Communications Tower is knocked off, Barcalow, looking out the viewport, somehow knows exactly where the damage to the ship has occured. This is a little like Captain Edward Smith looking out over the bow of the RMS Titanic and smelling which compartment was ripped open by the iceburg, but we must accept the givens of the scene. Barcalow turns to Ibanez and tells her to “Close compartment 21!” She turns to her left, reaches out, and presses a green maintained-contact button labeled ENABLE. This button is right next to a similar-but-black button also labeled ENABLE. As she presses the button, a nearby green LED flashes for a total of 4 frames, or 0.16 second.

She looks up at some unseen interface, and, pleased with what she sees there, begins to relax, the crisis passed.

A weary analysis

Let’s presume he is looking at some useful but out-of-character-for-this-bridge display, and that it does help him identify that yes, out of all the compartments that might have been the one they heard damaged, it is the 21st that needs closing.

Why does he have the information but she have the control? Time is wasted (and air—not to mention lives, people—is lost) in the time it takes him to instruct and her to react.
How did she find the right button when it’s labeled exactly the same way as adjacent button? Did she have to memorize the positions of all of them? Or the color? (How many compartments and therefore colors would that mean she would need to memorize?) Wouldn’t a label reading, say, “21” have been more useful in this regard?
What good does an LED do to flash so quickly? Certainly, she would want to know that the instruction was received, but it’s a very fast signal. It’s easy to miss. Shouldn’t it have stayed on to indicate not the moment of contact, but the state?
Why was this a maintained-contact button? Those look very similar when pressed or depressed. A toggle switch would display its state immediately, and would permit flipping a lot of them quickly, in case a lot of compartments need sealing.
Why is there some second place she must look to verify the results of her action, that is a completely separate place from Barcalow (remember he looks forward, she looks up). Sure, maybe redundancy. Sure, maybe he’s looking at data and she’s looking at video feeds, but wouldn’t it be better if they were looking at the same thing?

I know it’s a very quick interaction. And props to the scriptwriters for thinking about leaking air in space. But this entire interaction needs rethinking.

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Category Archives: Starship Troopers (1997)