Rocky Horror Vivification Interfaces

15 Sep 2026 by Christopher Noessel

As we continue to look at the interfaces in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this post will focus on the interfaces used to bring Rocky to life. The fancy Latinate word for this is vivification.

Come up to the lab

The interfaces in the lab where the procedure happens are mounted on an illuminated glass-brick wall. They are heavy and industrial-looking, cased in powder coat red and bolted together. They connect by pipe conduits. It very much reminds me of the ghost containment panel in Ghostbusters, which world be released nine years later.

They include…

Sonic Oscillator
Reactor Power Input
Medusa
Handwheel
Sonic Transducer
Monitor
Triple Contact Electro Magnet

We’ll talk about the whole set in a later post, but for now let’s focus on the ones involved in the vivification scene—when Frank-N-Furter brings Rocky to life before the Transylvanian conventioneers. These devices are the Sonic Oscillator, the Reactor Power Input, and the Handwheel.

Screenshot from the movie showing a distance shot of the laboratory interfaces on the wall. Labels in dripping blood type read “Sonic Oscillator”, “Reactor Power Input”, and “Handwheel”. Arrows point from the label to the interface. — This

Throughout the scene, Frank-N-Furter acts as a dramatic ringleader, telling his helpers what to do next. He begins by calling to Riff Raff, who stands at the instrument panel. Frank shouts, “Throw open the switches on the Sonic Oscillator!” Which brings us to…

The Sonic Oscillator

Screenshot from the movie showing Frank at the vat pointing with an intense expression toward Riff Raff. At his side are Columbia and Magneta. Dripping blood typography reads “THROW OPEN THE SWITCHES ON THE SONIC OSCILLATOR”.

This box has two large, vertical lever switches on the left. To the right of the switches is a column with small, dim, cowled displays. (That right half is the Reactor Power Input, to be discussed below.) Riff Raff pulls each of the the levers down, and as he does so, one of the cowled screens illuminate with faint green oscilloscope waves. It has no other discernible effect.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff lowering the first lever on the Sonic Oscillator.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff lowering the second lever on the Sonic Oscillator.

Several critiques about this interface.

Up maps more intuitively to on, open, and more. The levers should be pushed up to turn the oscillators on.
If they’re critical they remain in an up position for a duration or to prevent accidental activation, it should either latch or the friction joint holding it in place should be very strong.
The prop makers were probably constrained to the size of available oscilloscopes, but the screens are quite small compared to their housing. If they are meant to be read at any distance, those screens should be larger, and the displays be reworked to be more legible.
These controls are poorly mapped to their actuators. Imagine the improvement: Levers half this height could be stacked on top of the other, and be much more clearly associated with their screens by dint of being adjacent to them and only to them. As it is, when off, the rightmost lever is closest to the screen it does not control.
The two levers are quite close to each other. If they are meant to be operated simultaneously, that’s fine, but in the scene Riff Raff operates them separately, so it’s not their only use. If they weren’t stacked to improve their mappings like I suggested above, they should at least be moved apart to decrease the risk of accidental activation.

Three More Triangles!

Next Frank shouts, “And step up the reactor power input three…more…points!”

Screenshot from the movie showing Frank pointing dramatically to Riff Raff. Dripping blood typography reads “STEP UP THE REACTOR POWER INPUT THREE… MORE… POINTS!”

The right half of the box has an unlabeled, diamond-shaped dial on top, and, below, a set of eight red triangles arranged in a circle looking a bit like the Umbrella Corporation logo.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff pressing the first of the “umbrella top” button, which illuminates red.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff pressing the second of the “umbrella top” button, which illuminates red.

(Sorry about the darkness of these images. Keeping the illumination of the buttons visible means I can’t raise the midtone levels, like I could for the prior images.)

At Frank’s command, Riff Raff presses three alternating triangles in the umbrella control. (If numbering like a clock that goes to 8, he presses 5, then 7, then 1.) They illuminate as he presses them. With each button, the needle in the dial steps to the next graduation. Steam begins to escape from the nearby pipes (a side effect, one presumes). Neither the steam nor the reactor power input has any other discernible effect.

Several critiques about this interface.

The face should illuminate when the input is above zero for better readability, glanceability, and association with the illuminated buttons.
The needle is barely visible, especially from a distance. The needle should be as visible as the glowing buttons.
The umbrella-top arrangement of the buttons is poorly mapped. Up maps to more. Right also maps to more in left-to-right reading cultures. This clock wheel arrangement implies circularity, which makes no sense to modify a variable between 0 and 7.
Skipping places makes no sense. (The every-other button thing.) Had Frank asked to step it up five or more points, the interaction and display would have been awkward and error prone to both execute and read.
Presuming buttons show target value and the dial shows actual value, then they should be tightly mapped. Think of a thermostat where the target temperature is displayed adjacent to the actual temperature. See the comp below for a better suggestion of mapping.
If [measurement does not equal target] is an issue, then we need an alert. If the reading exceeds the setting, the setting button should blink; if it falls short, all buttons between the reading and the setting should blink to signal that it the value is not where it should be. Though, I have to note that if that kind of precision is called for, then it shouldn’t be buttons at all, but be a control that offers more precision, like a dial.
Riff Raff should just be able to press any button and have it and all the lower value buttons illuminate automatically. Press three, and one and two should illuminate without his having to press them. He shouldn’t have to press all three in sequence. It should also not prevent him from doing so, if he (or Frank) want to be dramatic.
Generally speaking, graduations should be labeled. This particular interface has few enough elements that I might give it a pass, since I suspect it can be easily subitized, positively (how many are lit) or negatively (how many are dim).

A comp showing a fan-shaped dial. The glowing fan is divided for 7 graduations. A needle points around 2.8. Above each graduation is a button. The first three are illuminated and glowing. The last four are not. The graphic has the “dripping blood” treatment seen throughout the graphics.

Much better. The comp raises the additional question of how it is turned off. I presume in the original they were toggle buttons that you would press again to turn off, so that could work here. So—press any but the current setting, and it changes. Press the current illuminated setting and the whole thing turns off. If the stakes are high enough, though, Riff might need a separate control or a safeguarded control. We can’t say because we don’t know what this actually does.

Put your hump into it, Riff!

After stepping up the reactor power three… more… points, Riff Raff kneels down to a handwheel, which he cranks clockwise to lower a ceiling-mounted apparatus from high in a cupola to just above the vat.

Screenshot from the movie: Riff Raff turning the handwheel while smiling creepily and looking toward the vat.

This is mechanical, which puts constraints on usability changes. Certainly that grip could be made wider and the axis could be raised to some more ergonomic position. (Or, given what we see on screen, it could be steam-powered and activated by a valve.) But note that, as it is, narratively, this does some things.

It adds to the weight of the scene via the effort heuristic.
It signals that Riff Raff is a servant, having to do difficult manual labor in a humbling position amid steam; which increases the surprise of his later mutiny. (And presages the awesome steam conversation scene in Alien four years later.)

The rainbow soup

The apparatus Riff lowers houses seven colored cylinders of matching-colored, viscous fluid. When they come within reach, Frank-N-Furter turns valves at the bottom of each one to allow the fluids to pour into the vat, turning its contents into a layered, upside-down rainbow.

Screen shot from the movie: A distance shot showing the vat, fluid apparatus, and cupola.

Screenshot from the movie: Frank maniacally turning the red valve to release red fluid.

Manual valves are a fine interface, since it appears precision is not required. This step is more improvisational art than science, it seems.

Aside: Watching this scene carefully I notice that even though the colored fluids are in an inexplicable order in the interface: yellow blue red purple orange blue green (no, I have no idea why there are two blues, maybe one was supposed to be indigo?), Curry takes pains to open them in rainbow order: red orange yellow green blue blue purple. Note this was *not* a reference to the rainbow flag, which goes in the opposite display order and which Gilbert Baker wouldn’t invent until three years after this film was released. It was Curry (or someone on set) paying attention to real-world light spectra.

Anyway, after enough of the fluid has been dropped to create a layered rainbow effect in the vat, Frank-N-Furter frantically closes the valves. (If you’re wondering, editing makes it difficult to tell in what order he closes the valves, but it seems random.) After a beat, Riff Raff cranks the handwheel counterclockwise to lift Rocky—who is gripping the ceiling-mounted apparatus—out of the vat. The rest of the procedure is analog and does not involve technological interfaces, but does involve a musical number in which Rocky is unwrapped like a reverse mummy, while singing.

Screenshot from the movie showing Frank on Riff Raff’s shoulders, gaping in awe at his creation Rocky, as Rocky is being unwrapped and exposing his physique. Dripping blood typography reads “SHA LA LA LA THAT AIN’T NO CRIME”.

That’s it. That’s how Rocky is brought to life. And, now I am happy to declare…

This is the best series of interfaces in the movie

Not for its usability. It’s fairly wretched for that (see lengthy notes above). But…

Diegetically, the unusability is a feature. First, by contributing to the perception to the conventioneers that big, dramatic science is happening before their eyes. It’s impressive theatrics. I think it could go even farther in seeming usable while still maintaining inscrutable complexity, but this does the trick for Transylvanians. Second, it builds on guild mentality. That is, the inscrutability helps deter others from thinking they could easily do it themselves. It’s a kind of job security through obscurity.

Extradiegetically, because the film is partly meant to mock B-movie sci-fi, the fact that they are…

poorly designed
pseudoscientific at best,
cinegenic, and
histrionic;

…they are perfect.

No notes.

I mean, 1800-ish words of notes.

But you know, “no notes.”

As if all this drama wasn’t enough. In the next post it’s going to get turned up to 11. Triple Contact Electro Magnet

Star Trek: Section 31 — The Godsend

11 Jun 2026 by Christopher Noessel

As part of the Fritzes Best Interfaces award for 2026, I am reviewing the interfaces in Star Trek: Section 31. This post is about the quadrant-destroying weapon of mass destruction called the Godsend. Note this blog generally eschews analysis of weapons, but this one is more MacGuffin than blueprint, and it has the worst interface in the film.

Title card for 'Coded Transmission 2: The Godsend' featuring dynamic background effects.

The Godsend is a weapon that Georgiou had created when she was Emperor. It is meant to function as a scorched-earth deterrent to her enemies.

“It triggers a chain reaction, like a virus passing between planets. Everything in its path incinerates. An entire quadrant would be lost.”

To her credit, she says she ordered it destroyed, but it was secretly stored by San and later brought to Prime. It is a metal object, roughly a sphere, and slightly smaller than a human head. Around its “equator” it has a smooth belt punctuated by 10 mistily-glowing circles. The hemispheres outside this belt are faceted. There are lots of flat nurnies and greebles on the surface with no obvious purpose. They’re not even aposematic, which would be appropriate.

A metallic spherical device with intricate patterns and glowing elements, resting on a smooth surface.

When Georgiou and Sahar teleport to San’s ship, combat ensues, and in the fray San accidentally knocks the Godsend off its pedestal. It hits the floor and malfunctions, exhibiting a complex set of behaviors I’ll just call the “tick”:

We hear a mechanical clockwork ticking.
The belt rotates a few degrees clockwise (as seen from the north pole).
The upper hemisphere rotates a few degrees counter-clockwise.
One of the white circles turns pinkish-red.

(I know that north and south are arbitrary conventions here, but it helps with the description.) After the tick is complete, its computer voice says, “Detonation sequence activating”. The voice is low, raspy, and appropriately menacing.

A metallic spherical object featuring intricate geometric designs and illuminated colored orbs, placed on a surface.

After a beat, it ticks again. A second circle turns red, and the voice says, “Awaiting biosignature confirmation”. Amidst the ongoing fighting and ship careening, the Godsend gets kicked around a lot and, at intervals, continues to tick.

San and Fuzz are defeated, and as the ship nears the portal, Georgiou picks the Godsend up off the floor. It ticks again. She places her hand on the “north pole” for about two seconds.

A hand gripping a futuristic, spherical device with intricate designs and glowing elements, set against a blurred background of lights.

The remaining white circles turn red, and the voice says, “Biosignature confirmed…Detonation in 60 seconds.” It announces again at the 30 second mark and continues to rotate at intervals. The voice warning comes again at 10, and then each second from 5 to 1. At zero there is a blinding light as it explodes just inside the portal on the Mirror Universe side as Georgiou and Sahar beam back to safety on the scow.

OK. So this thing…

It’s almost purely narrative

…this thing is diegetic nonsense.

A futuristic black sphere with a geometric design rolling on a shiny surface, illuminated by warm lighting. — Thank you for turning me on.

It arms accidentally? From being dropped on the floor? That can’t be its intended operation, so, a quadrant-destroying weapon of mass destruction was just, you know, poorly engineered? No one thought that this heavy, spheroid, metallic object might ever slip out of a hand? Or was it sabotaged like the Death Star, adding this flaw somewhere along the engineering process? Let’s hope that saboteur also immediately fled the quadrant afterward, taking along…I don’t know…every single one of their loved ones with them, along with all the innocents who might get incinerated in the blast? What size getaway ship were they working with?

Next, why is there a countdown for a detonation sequence that still requires authorization? What would happen if the detonation sequence completed without being authorized?

If nothing, then the countdown is just a goofy, extradiegetic tension-building function.
If something, shouldn’t the voice alert the user to those stakes?

Why is the countdown visualizer spread in a ring around a sphere? That makes it entirely possible that those critical signals are hidden from view for about half the time they are relevant. And they’re inset, meaning that even when looking at the facing side, at most three of them are clear. We will just see slivers of the other two. The design hides most of the visual part of the countdown from view.

A futuristic, intricately designed robotic device with a geometric shape and illuminated features, set against a dark, red-toned background. — Either the countdown isn’t underway here, or it’s halfway through. Who knows?

The choice of authorization (two-second hand on the pole) is easily understandable by the audience, but seems really, really prone to accidental activation. The pole is how one might, you know, carry it, or hold the damned thing while dusting the shelf underneath it.

A close-up of a person holding a glowing, ornate metallic artifact with red elements, set against a dark background.

One of the key principles for deterrents (we got “good” at this during the Cold War) is automaticity. If the one person who can trigger it can be killed before they activate the deterrent, then it’s just a tactical exercise: separate the authorizer from the device, or assassinate them quickly before they can activate it. If it’s biometric, tactics can be just making sure that body part is destroyed first. Both of these interventions are possible given the design of the Godsend. Really it should have a dead man’s switch, not an activation trigger.

If it was left as an activation trigger, the biosignature long-hold is the moment that a countdown is relevant. It would give the carrier a beat to think, “Oh, gods, no. I was just cleaning!” and reposition their hand for safety before going to change pants. The moment her hand is in place, the device should then signal a countdown in a way that it is undeniably perceptible to Georgiou—no matter in what orientation she is holding it. And it shouldn’t just be visual with intermittent audio, as we hear in the film. The audio should be constant, visuals should be on every side of the device, it should provide rising haptic feedback, and reach out to all nearby computer-controlled actuators to have them broadcast that everything’s about to be borked, send a last 🩷 SMS to your loved ones. Having it announce that it’s going to blow after a silent long-hold is very, very bad design. We can argue security through obscurity here, but the cost of accidental activation is far too catastrophic.

Maybe the thing that’s been keeping the Prime Universe safe all along from the fascists in the Mirror Universe is that they’re terrible designers and rotten engineers. It is a testament to how much I like the other interfaces that this one didn’t drag the rest of them down with it, because it’s just an immersion-breaking misery.

Next up: The Section 31 report card

Door Bomb and Safety Catches

29 Dec 2016 by scifihughf

Johnny leaves the airport by taxi, ending up in a disreputable part of town. During his ride we see another video phone call with a different interface, and the first brief appearance of some high tech binoculars. I’ll return to these later, for the moment skipping ahead to the last of the relatively simple and single-use physical gadgets.

Johnny finds the people he is supposed to meet in a deserted building but, as events are not proceeding as planned, he attaches another black box with glowing red status light to the outside of the door as he enters. Although it looks like the motion detector we saw earlier, this is a bomb.

This is indeed a very bad neighbourhood of Newark. Inside are the same Yakuza from Beijing, who plan to remove Johnny’s head. There is a brief fight, which ends when Johnny uses his watch to detonate the bomb. It isn’t clear whether he pushes or rotates some control, but it is a single quick action.

This demonstrates an interesting difference between interface design for the physical world and for software systems. Inside a computer, actions are just flipping bits in storage and thus easy to undo. Even supposedly destructive actions such as erasing files can often be reversed. In the real world, the effects of, for example, explosions tend to be much more permanent.

We generally don’t want destructive actions to be too easy to perform, from guns and other things that go boom to formatting computer disks.

A widely used solution in the real world is the safety catch, as with guns, or arming switch, seen in countless thriller films with nuclear weapons. Another example are the two-hand safety switches used in high voltage electrical distribution panels. Activation of these requires two individual actions, separated in time and at least a short distance in space. Some systems, both real and in film, go even further and have covers on the arming switches, so even just preparing for activation requires two separate physical actions.

While the bomb is on his belt, Johnny doesn’t have to worry about accidentally pressing the “explode” button on his watch because the bomb is not active. Only after he has armed it and placed on the door can the watch activate the bomb, so he can take his time and verify whether or not it is necessary before doing so. And when it is active, he can do so very quickly even though he is in the middle of a fight.

But safety catches and arming switches introduce modes to an interaction, which have a bad reputation in interface design. Had the watch-bomb designers followed most conventional GUI design guidelines, there would be no arming switch on the bomb. Instead the watch would have popped up a “Do you really want to explode the bomb (Y/N)?” dialog, possibly with a short delay to ensure Johnny thought about his decision before answering. He would have been decapitated.

Compare to LoTek

Later on in the film we see an example of a poorly designed system without a safety catch. The LoTeks in their bridge home have a defensive “bug dropper”, so called because it drops ancient Volkswagens from a great height.

The bug dropper can be activated by pushing just a single handle. Because there is no safety switch, a guard accidentally drops a flaming VW Beetle onto the lead characters, nearly killing them.

Conclusion

From the description above it would seem that safety catches are the obvious solution. But of course it’s more complicated than that. Consider what would have happened if Johnny had met friends instead of enemies and settled down for a conversation. Thirty minutes later they’ve agreed on another meeting, and Johnny taps his watch to bring up the reminders app. Oops!

Should the bomb have disarmed itself after a given time period? If it did, how would Johnny be notified of this?

Most of us do not design interfaces for lethal hardware and life or death situations. There are however an increasing number of drones and other physical devices which are now remotely controlled from phone or tablet apps rather than dedicated hardware controllers as in the past. The “Internet of Things” will bring even more real world actions under computer interface control. In the future, we will most likely see more of these safety catches and arming switches in computer interfaces, and we need to figure out how to use them properly.

Brain Upload

7 Dec 2016 by scifihughf

Once Johnny has installed his motion detector on the door, the brain upload can begin.

3. Building it

Johnny starts by opening his briefcase and removing various components, which he connects together into the complete upload system. Some of the parts are disguised, and the whole sequence is similar to an assassin in a thriller film assembling a gun out of harmless looking pieces.

It looks strange today to see a computer system with so many external devices connected by cables. We’ve become accustomed to one piece computing devices with integrated functionality, and keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, and headphones that connect wirelessly.

Cables and other connections are not always considered as interfaces, but “all parts of a thing which enable its use” is the definition according to Chris. In the early to mid 1990s most computer user were well aware of the potential for confusion and frustration in such interfaces. A personal computer could have connections to monitor, keyboard, mouse, modem, CD drive, and joystick – and every single device would use a different type of cable. USB, while not perfect, is one of the greatest ever improvements in user interfaces.

Why not go wireless? Wireless devices remove the need for a physical connection, but this means that anyone, not just you, could potentially connect. So instead of worrying about whether we have the right kind of cable, we now worry about the right kind of Bluetooth pairing and WiFi encryption password scheme. Mobile wireless devices also need their own batteries, which have to be charged. So wireless may seem visually cleaner, but comes with its own set of problems.

As of early 2016 we have two new standards, Lightning and USB-C, that are orientation-independent (only fifty years after audio cables), high bandwidth, and able to transmit power to peripherals as well. Perhaps by 2021 cables will have made a comeback as the usual way to connect devices.

2. Explaining it

Johnny explains the process to the scientists. He needs them to begin the upload by pushing a button, helpfully labelled “start”, on the gadget that resembles an optical disk drive. There’s a big red button as well, which is not explained but would make an excellent “cancel” button.

It would be simpler if Johnny just did this himself. But we will shortly discover that the upload process is apparently very painful. If Johnny had his hands near the system, he might involuntarily push another button or disturb a cable. So for them, having a single, easily differentiated button to press minimizes their chance of messing it up.

1. Making codes

He also sticks a small black disk on the hotel room’s silver remote control. The small disk is evidently is a wireless controller or camera of some kind. The scientists must watch the upload progress counter, and as it approaches the end, use this modified remote to grab three frames from the TV display, which will become the “access code” for the data. (More on this below.)

None of the buttons on this remote have markings or labels, but neither Johnny nor the scientist who will be using it are bothered. Perhaps this hotel chain tries to please every possible guest by not favouring any particular language? But even in that case, I’d expect there to be some kind of symbols on the buttons and a multilingual manual to explain the meaning of each. Maybe Johnny spends so much time in hotel suites that he has memorised the button layout?

Short of a mind reading remote that can translate any button press into “what the user intended”, I have to admit this is a terrible interface.

(There is a label on the black disk, but I have no idea what it means or even which script that is. Anyone?)

0. Go go go

Johnny plugs in his implant, puts on a headset with more cables, and bites down on a mouthguard. He’s ready.

The scientist pushes the start button and the upload begins. Johnny sees the data stream in his headset as a flood of graphics and text.

Why does he need the headset when there is a direct cable connection to the implant? The movie doesn’t make it explicit. It could be related to the images used as the access code. (More on this below.) Perhaps the images need to be processed by the recipient’s own optic nerve system for more reliable storage?

Still, in the spirit of apologetics we should try to find a better explanation than “an opportunity for 1995 cutting edge computer generated graphics.” Perhaps it is a very flashy progress indicator? Older computer systems had blinking lights on disk drives to indicate activity, copied on some of today’s USB sticks. Current-day file upload or download GUIs have progress bars. As processing and graphics capabilities increase, it will be possible for software to display thumbnails or previews of the actual data being transferred without slowing down.

Unfortunately there is an argument against this, which is that the obvious upload progress indicator is a numeric display counting gigabytes down to zero, and it makes a fast chirping sound as a sonic indicator as well. The counter shows the data flowing at gigabytes per second, the entire upload lasting about a minute. There’s also the problem that it’s not Johnny who is interested in knowing whether the upload is scientific data rather than, say, a video collection; but the scientists, and they can’t see it.

As the counter drops below one hundred, the scientist points the remote with black disk at the TV display, currently showing a cartoon, and presses the middle button. The image from the TV appears overlaid on the data stream to Johnny. This is a little odd, because Johnny assured the scientists that he wouldn’t know what the access codes were himself. Maybe these brief flashes are not enough time for him to remember these particular images among the gigabytes of visual content. But the way they’re shown to us, I’ll bet you can remember them when they come up again later in the plot.

Two more images are grabbed before the counter stops. When the upload finishes, the three images are printed out. (In the original film this is shown upside down, so I have rotated the image.)

Tagged:

So what are the images for? The script isn’t clear. I suggest that the images are being used as the equivalents of very large random numbers for whatever cryptography scheme protects the data against unauthorised access. Some current day systems use the timing of key presses and mouse movements as a source of randomness because humans simply can’t move their fingers with microsecond precision. Here, the human element makes it impossible to predict exactly which frame is chosen.

Humans also find images much easier to recognise than hundred digit numbers. Anyone who has seen the printout will be able to say whether a particular image is part of the access code or not with a high degree of confidence. In computer systems today, Secure Shell, or ssh, is a widely used encrypted terminal program for secure access to servers. Recent versions of ssh have a ‘randomart’ capability which shows a small ASCII icon generated from the current cryptographic key to everyone who logs on. If this ASCII icon appears different, this alerts everyone that the server key has been changed.

There’s one potential usability problem with the whole “pick three random images” mechanism. The last frame was grabbed when the counter was very close to zero. What would have happened if he had been too slow and missed altogether? Wouldn’t it be more reliable to have the upload system automatically grab the images rather than rely on a human? Chris suggests that maybe it secretly did grab three images that could have used without human input, but privileged the human input since it was more reliably random.

Quick aside: You may be asking, if images would be so wonderful, why aren’t we using them in this way already? It’s because our current security systems need not just very large random numbers, but very large random numbers with particular mathematical properties such as being prime. But let’s cut Johnny Mnemonic some slack, saying that by 2021 we may have new algorithms.

OK, back to the plot.

-1. Sharing the codes

The access codes are to be faxed from Beijing to Newark, although this gets interrupted by the Yakuza intruders. This is yet another device with unmarked buttons.

This device makes the same beeps and screeches as a 1990s analog fax machine. Since we’ll later learn that all the fax messages and phone calls are stored digitally in cyberspace, this must be a skeuomorphism, the old familiar audio tones now serving just as progress indicators.

As with other audio output, the tones allow the user to know that the transmission is proceeding and when it ends without having to pay full attention to the device. On the other hand, there is potential for confusion here as the digital upload is (presumably) much faster. Most current day computer systems could upload three photos, even in high resolution, well before the sequence of tones would complete. Users would most likely wait longer than actually necessary before moving on to their next task.

-2. Washing up

During the upload Johnny clenches his fists and bites his mouthguard. When the upload finishes, he retreats to the bathroom in considerable pain. At one point blood flows from his nose, and he swipes his hand over the tap to wash it down the drain. The bathroom announces that the water temperature is 17 degrees. We’ll come back to this later.

As Make It So emphasises in the chapter on brain interfaces, there is nothing in our current knowledge to suggest that writing or reading memories to or from a human brain would be painful. On the other hand, we know that information in the brain isthe shape of the neurons in the brain. Who knows what side effects will happen as those neurons are disconnected and reconnected as they need to be? We don’t know, so can’t really say whether it would hurt or not.

-3. Escaping the Yakuza

As mentioned in a prior post, while he is in the bathroom, the motion detector Johnny installed on the hotel door isn’t very effective and the Yakuza break in, kill everyone else, and acquire the second of the three access code images. Johnny escapes with the first image and flies to Newark, North America.

Red Phone

16 Jul 2014 by Christopher Noessel

After the gravitic distortion is discovered, Barcalow flips a toggle switch upwards with his thumb. As Ibanez confirms that “Gravity is 225 and rising,” the light on the bridge turns red, and Barcalow turns to a monitor.

The monitor (seen above) features a video window in the top center. Along the left side of the screen 11 random numbers report the COMM STATS INTERSHIP. Along the right side of the screen 11 other random numbers report the COMM STATS INTRASHIP. Beneath the video some purple bars slide in and out from a central column of red rectangles. One of these rectangles is bright yellow. Beneath that a section reports SCANNING FREQUENCIES as 21 three-character strings, some of which are highlighted as red. At the bottom of the screen blue and yellow-green smears race back and forth across a rectangle. Everything is in Starship Troopers‘ signature saturated colors and a block font like Microgramma or Eurostile.

These details are almost immediately obscured, as Deladier looks up from her laptop (looking presciently like a modern Macbook Air with its aluminum casing) to look at the video monitor to demand a “Report,” and the video grows larger to fill the screen.

Here the snarky description must pause for some analysis.

Analysis

The red alert mechanism is actually pretty good. Both the placement of its switch at shoulder level and the fact that it must be flipped up help prevent against accidental activation. The fact that it’s a toggle switch means it can be undone with ease if necessary. The red light immediately provides feedback to everyone on the bridge (and throughout the ship?) that the system has gone into a red alert. No other action is necessary to alert the person who needs to be informed, i.e. the Captain. The only other improvement might be a klaxon warning to alert others who are sleeping, but it’s entirely possible that very thing is happening elsewhere on the ship, and the bridge is spared that distraction. So full marks.

The user interface on the monitor seems pretty crappy though. If someone is meant to monitor COMM STATS—intership or intraship—I cannot imagine how a column of undifferentiated numbers helps. A waveform would be more useful to track activity across a spectrum. Something. Anything other than a stack of numbers that are hard to read and interpret.

The SCANNING FREQUENCIES is similarly useless. Sure, it’s clear that the ship’s systems are scanning those frequencies, but the three-character strings require crew to memorize what those mean. If those frequencies are defined—as you imagine they must be to be at all useful as static variables—then you can remove the cognitive weight of having to memorize the differences between JL5 and LQ7 by giving them actual names, and only displaying the ones that have activity on them, and what that activity means. Does someone need to listen in? Shouldn’t that task be apparent? And why would that need to be shown generally to the bridge, rather than to a communications officer? And I’m not sure what those purple squiggles mean. It’s nice that they’re animated I guess, but if they’re meant to help the user monitor some variable, they’re too limited. Like the sickbay display on the original Star Trek, knowing the current state is likely not as useful as knowing how the information is trending over time. (See page 261 for more details on this.) So trendlines would be better here. The little sweeping candy colored smears are actually okay, though, presuming that it’s showing that the system is successfully sweeping all frequencies for additional signal. Perhaps a bit distracting, but easy to habituate.

It’s nice that the video screen fills the screen to match the needs of the communicators. But as with so many other sci-fi video calls, no effort is made to explain where the camera is on this thing. Somehow they can just look at the eyes of the other person on the monitor, and it works. This feels natural to the actors, looks natural to the audience, and would be natural in real life, but until we can figure out how to embed a camera within a screen, this can’t work this way, and we’re stuck with the gaze monitoring problem raised in the Volumetric Projection chapter of the book with the Darth Vader example.

So, all in all, this interface is mostly terrible until it becomes just a videophone. And even then there are questions.

Snarky description continues

Picking up the description where I left off, after the Captain demands a report, Barcalow tells her quickly “Captain, we’re in the path of an unidentified object heading toward us at high speed.” Ibanez then looks down at her monitor at the gravity well animation, to remark that the “Profile suggests an asteroid, ma’am.” You know, just before looking out the window.

STARSHIP_TROOPERS_asteroid

Honestly, that’s one of the funniest two-second sequences in the whole movie.

Sci-fi interfaces

Stop watching sci-fi. Start using it.

Tag Archives: accidental activation