Rocky Horror: The OSHA Report

6 Oct 2026 by Christopher Noessel

AI-generated image: Brad and Janet drive in the rain while the OSHA inspector takes notes in the back seat.

AI-generated image: The OSHA inspector looks out the castle window, taking notes.

AI-generated image: The OSHA inspector, grumpy, takes notes as Frank and Riff stand near the laboratory interfaces.

U.S. Department of Labor

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Denton Area Office

Route 2181, Denton, Texas

Inspection Number:: 1975-RHPS-0001
Inspection Date(s):: One night in November, rain
Issuance Date:: 06 Oct 2026

Citation and Notification of Penalty

To:	Frank-N-Furter, d/b/a RKO Radio Pictures The Castle (no street address; follow the light over at the Frankenstein place) Denton, Texas
Inspection Site:	Laboratory, upper floor. Access via elevator.
Employees observed:	Riff Raff (handyman); Magenta (domestic); Columbia (groupie; classification disputed); Rocky (newly created; employment status pending)
Compliance Officer:	Redacted Redacted, CSHO
Weather:	Rain.

This Citation and Notification of Penalty describes violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 observed at the site above. The employer must post this Citation, or a copy of it, in a prominent place at or near the location of the violation(s) cited, where it can be readily seen by all affected employees, whether the location has lifted off the ground and fled the planet or not.

The employer, Frank-N-Furter, may contest this Citation within fifteen working days of receipt. Contests must be submitted in writing. See Section 5.

1. Scope

I was retained to inspect a control panel. I understand that others have already reviewed the individual instruments on it, and I have read those notes. I am not going to repeat them, partly because it would be redundant and partly because I have run out of ways to write “the switch goes the wrong way.”.

This report treats the panel as a system: one workstation, operated by four different people, for at least five different purposes, from a room that is also a stage, a dinner theatre, and, I think, a crime scene. The question is not whether any given lever is a good lever. The question is whether a person standing in front of this wall, under pressure, can tell what is happening and do something sensible about it.

The answer to these questions is no, and the reasons are below.

2. Citation

Citation 1 Item 1 Type of Violation: Serious OSH Act §5(a)(1): General Duty Clause

The employer has failed to furnish a place of employment free from recognized hazards, in that the laboratory control panel, taken as a whole, provides its operators with no reliable means of determining the current state of the equipment, no consistent means of being warned when that state becomes dangerous, and no indication of what the equipment will do next. Each of the individual instruments could be redesigned to the satisfaction of the prior reviewers and this citation would still stand.

Findings supporting this citation follow, organized the way I was trained to organize them and not the way the employer organized his wall.

Date By Which Violation Must be Abated: 30 days

3. Findings

3.1 Perception and reading

Nobody can read this panel from where they use it. The panel is operated by an employee standing at arm’s length, but it is commanded by the employer from across the laboratory, typically from beside the vat, typically while…shouting and pointing? From that distance, nothing on the wall is legible: not the stencils, not the needle, not the scope traces. The employer is issuing instructions to an instrument he cannot see, and receiving confirmation by watching whether his employee’s arm moves. The arm is the display. This is not a reading distance for which anything on the panel was sized.

The panel has no “normal.” A good panel can be check‑read: a glance tells you whether everything is where it should be. This panel has one quantitative instrument, two qualitative ones, and no way to tell at a glance whether the system is idle, armed, running, or faulted. Every housing is the same red whether the unit inside is on or off. The only difference between a panel that is doing nothing and a panel that is about to petrify someone is the angle of one handle among several identical handles.

The environment fights the displays. The panel is mounted on a wall of illuminated glass brick, which means the brightest thing in the operator’s field of view is the background, and the instruments are silhouetted against it. The few internally lit elements (oscilloscope, one green flashing lightning thingy, some triangular buttons) are competing with a backlit wall and intermittent steam. State is encoded in lever position, a dim gauge, green light, or in nothing. There is no redundant coding by shape, position, or text for anything that changes.

3.2 Information hierarchy

Everything has the same visual weight. A closed‑circuit television, a power‑input control, and a device that turns people to stone are presented as similar red boxes of identical size with similar stencils, arranged in no particular order. The hierarchy of consequence—the thing that tells a stressed operator which of these to look at first —has not been designed. It has been powder‑coated and danced around.

Spatial memory has been sabotaged. Two controls that undo each other are in different rooms. The controls used together in the laboratory are spread from the ceiling (fluid cylinders, in a chandelier?) to the floor (a handwheel) to the wall (everything else), with a cross‑room walk in between. The layout does not reflect the order in which anything is used, and there is no evidence it was ever stable—the employer moves between panel, vat, platform, and elevator with the confidence of a man who has never had to find a control in the dark.

The motion budget is spent on steam. The largest, most eye‑catching moving element in the laboratory is vapour escaping from pipes near the reactor control, which carries less than no information at all—it obscures the interface. The scope traces in the oscilloscope move continuously whether or not anything is happening. The one moving element that does carry information—the needle—is the smallest and dimmest. Attention througout is being drawn to the wrong things.

3.3 Alerting philosophy

There isn’t one. I looked for a warning tier, a caution tier, and an advisory tier. I found a green lightning bolt that flashes for roughly for a fleeting moment when the most dangerous device on the wall fires. Green. For the weapon. The only escalating signal in the room—the hum that rises with the power of the electromagnet—tracks power, not hazard, and it is heard by everyone in the castle and directed at no one.

Nothing latches. If the operator looks away during the flash, the panel retains no record that the Medusa (note, that is its name, as confirmed by the wall stencil) was ever actuated. There is no “fired” indicator, no count, no armed/safe state. The panel cannot tell you what it did ten seconds ago, which means it cannot tell a new operator anything about the situation they have just walked into.

The nuisance rate, the amount of distracting noise compared to signal, is…and I’ve never had to write this…100%. The oscilloscopes wave whenever they are on and mean nothing in particular. The steam vents whenever the reactor is stepped up and is treated as normal. Employees have been trained, by the equipment itself, to ignore every visible signal the equipment produces. When a genuine fault occurs it will present as exactly the kind of light and vapour everyone has learned to disregard.

Every signal is ambiguous. Not one indication on this panel says what is wrong, where, or what to do about it. The closest thing to a fault annunciator in the building is the monitor going to static, which is the least important device in the room and the only one that admits when it has failed.

3.4 System state and modes

The mode annunciator is a person. The panel supports at least five distinct operating modes—monitoring, vivification, magnetic retrieval, freezing, petrification—and no element of the panel indicates which is active, whether they are mutually exclusive, or what happens if two are engaged at once. As it is, mode transitions are announced by the employer shouting the name of the next mode across the room. When the employer is not shouting, the current mode is unknowable. When the employer is singing and dancing, it is worse.

There is no “I have the controls.” Over the course of the inspection, four different people operated this panel: two employees, the employer, and a houseguest with no training and, at that point, no shoes, no protective gear, and no, uh, clothes. At no time was there any indication of who was in control, any handoff protocol, or any lockout to prevent one operator’s action from stacking on another’s. Aviation solved this with three words and a rule about who says them. This laboratory seems to believe they “solved it” with an nod.

Trust is uncalibrated in both directions. The panel displays nothing about what the equipment perceives or intends: not what the magnet is about to pull, not who the Medusa will resolve to, not what the reactor is even doing. As a result, operators have no basis for confidence, yet use the equipment with total confidence anyway, I guess because…it has always worked? This is the trust profile of someone who has never seen a failure, which points to a lack of training that is unfortunately not part of the scope of this document.

3.5 Controls

Prior reviewers have covered mapping and switch selection in detail and I refer the employer to their notes. Two system‑level findings remain.

Negative transfer is designed in. The panel borrows from at least four control lineages — theatrical lighting, automotive shifters, telegraphy, and the slot machine—and every one of them brings habits that are wrong for its neighbor. An operator who has driven a car will treat the guided channel as a gear shift, a mode selector. An operator who has run a lighting board will treat the knife switches as a persistent state, when one of them is momentary. One of those control attitudes will be wrong at least half the time. Conventions were not chosen so much as randomly distributed.

No operator has been qualified. The panel is used by anyone who happens to stand nearby. The houseguest operated the monitor on first contact without instruction. Nothing on the panel distinguishes controls an untrained person may touch from controls that literally petrify people. The envelope runs from floor to cupola, the operators range from a man on his knees to a man in platform heels on a ramp, and no one has asked whether any of them can reach or see the things they are expected to reach and see.

3.6 Failure and degradation

A dead panel and a live panel look the same. With the scopes off, the wall is a set of red boxes with handles. There is no power‑on indication for the panel as a whole, no indication that any individual unit has lost supply, and no way to distinguish “off” from “failed”.

Every switch displays commanded state, not actual state. A handle in the down position tells the operator the circuit should be closed. It does not tell them that it is. A welded contact, a broken linkage, or a burnt‑out unit will leave the handle exactly where it was and the operator none the wiser. There is one feedback loop on the wall that closes on the effect rather than the input. It is a dial associated with the Reactor Power Input, and that is wholly unlabeled. More on this below.

Load and limit are invisible. The entire panel appears to draw from a single reactor whose only readout is a needle on an unscaled dial with no red zone, no maximum, and no indication of what is drawing from it. The employer stepped it up “three points.” Three points toward what? He did not answer when I asked. He just sort of glared intensely.

The effect lags the action. The magnet reaches full power and then does nothing until a fourth, separate, unmarked action is taken. Delay between control and effect is how operators learn to overshoot, and overshooting is how you wind up with a wheelchair through a wall and the full force of the Americans with Disabilities Act shutting down your laboratory.

3.7 Regulatory and evaluation

No mandated indications are present. There is no high‑voltage marking, no energized‑equipment marking, no emergency stop, and no means of de‑energizing the panel from the operator’s position. I am not aware of a standard symbol for petrification, and I would settle for a standard symbol for anything here.

Nothing has ever been tested. The panel was, as far as I can determine, built to be looked at, and the only evaluation it has received is an audience. I found no evidence of occlusion testing, of any attempt to measure what an operator can read in a single glance, or of a single rehearsed failure scenario. The one unplanned failure I observed—the specimen leaving the vat under its own power—was handled entirely without reference to the panel, which is the most honest review of the panel anyone has yet produced.

4. Abatement

The employer is directed to abate within 30 days. Component‑level fixes recommended by prior reviewers are endorsed and incorporated by reference. In addition, at the system level:

Establish a hierarchy. Decide which three things an operator must be able to read from anywhere in the room, and make them the largest, brightest, and most stable things on the wall. Everything else gets smaller.
Give the panel a normal state. One indication, visible across the lab, that says the system is idle and safe. If it is not lit, nobody touches anything.
Design an alerting scheme. Three tiers, each with its own colour, sound, and fixed location. Red for danger. Green for safe. Note: Petrifying a guest is not green. Warnings latch until acknowledged.
Annunciate the mode. One display that states which of the five modes is active and refuses to let a second one engage without an explicit transition. The employer may continue to shout, but the panel must no longer depend on it.
Close the feedback loop. Every actuated state gets a confirming indication driven by the effect, not the handle.
Assign control. One operator at a time, indicated on the panel, with a handoff step. Untrained persons are locked out.
Silence the nuisances. The scopes display only when they mean something. The steam gets a label or a pipe or, I don’t know, repaired?
I don’t know…Test it? Occlusion trials at operating distance for each operator, and at least one rehearsed failure that is neither a musical number nor a murder.

The inspector will return in 30 days to verify abatement, should the house return to this planet.

5. Inspector’s Closing Statement

I am aware that this equipment and its operators are…theatrical…and that its inscrutability may be the point. If I understood the lyrical explanations correctly, the aim is a display of expertise to visiting conventioneers, a guild moat around the practice. I have inspected many workplaces built to impress the owner’s guests. What they have in common is that the owner is the only person who knows how they work, and the owner is never the one standing at the panel when it goes wrong.

The individual instruments on this wall are poorly chosen. But you could replace every one of them with a textbook control and this panel would still have no hierarchy, no normal, no warning, no mode, no feedback, and no one qualified to run it. Those are not properties of switches. They are properties of the system, and the system was never designed. It was assembled, painted red, and lit from behind.

Penalties are itemized on the attached schedule. The employer may contest this citation within fifteen working days. He may not, it must be said, contest it through song.

Redacted Redacted
Compliance Safety and Health Officer
OSHA Region V

Attachment A: Penalty schedule (7 pp.)

Attachment B: Prior component reviews, incorporated by reference (4 docs.)

Attachment C: Proposed panel relayout, one sheet, coffee‑stained (1 p.)

AI-generated image: The OSHA inspector watches Dr. Scott blast up the stairs. He takes notes.

AI-generated image: The OSHA inspector takes notes while observign Eddie’s cadaver under the dining table at the dinner party.

AI-generated image: The OSHA inspector takes notes as Riff blasts Rocky with pink laser beams.

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…

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 it’s critical they remain in an up position for a duration, or to prevent accidental de/activation, it should either latch in the up position, 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

Rocky Horror Castle Monitors

8 Sep 2026 by Christopher Noessel

Probably the most boring of the interfaces in the story (from an interaction design perspective, rather than an ethical one), these are monochrome monitors showing feeds from hidden, closed-circuit television cameras in places around the castle—including places you’d expect to be private.

Screenshot from the movie showing Magenta and Riff Raff looking in on Janet in her room.

Magenta and Riff Raff watch Janet’s bedroom from the laboratory.

Screenshot from the movie showing a monitor with Janet and Rocky in the lab.

Magenta and Columbia watch the laboratory feed from a castle room.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff delivering the news that Rocky has broken his chains and vanished.

Riff Raff lets Frank-N-Furter know that Rocky has escaped via the monitor in Brad’s room.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff discovering Dr. Scott outside the castle via the laboratory monitor. The lever is vertical.

Dr. Scott appears at the front of the castle as seen from the laboratory monitor.

The monitors are unusual for being octagonal, but this looks like a frame on a 4:3 television, standard for the mid-1970s. Note that the show that made this treatment much more famous was Battlestar Galactica, which would air 3 years after this movie’s release. (Another potential influence?)

I’ve got to keep control

What on these interfaces can they control? Look above and you’ll see that the monitor in Magenta and Columbia’s room has a single dial in the upper right. We never see it in use.

Screenshot from the movie showing Janet looking at static in the lab monitor.

Screenshot from the movie showing Janet looking at Brad and Frank in the lab monitor.

The one interface we do see in use is the arm to the right of the monitor in the laboratory. It reminds of me of a slot machine arm, but when we see Janet and Riff Raff operate it, they manually pull it down and return it to the upright position. So it lacks the spring-return behavior of slot machine arms. And as we’ll see with the Sonic Oscillator in the vivification post, there are levers on this panel that stay in place. No, it seems to be a loose, positional lever, and the raised and lowered positions do…something…but it’s unclear what.

Such arms would most befit two states, because the extents of the range are easy for a user to achieve. But there are more than two states, even if we just look at the functions in the film.

How to turn it off and on? (We see the laboratory monitor off and on.)
How to change the channel to view other feeds? (The laboratory monitor shows both Janet’s bedroom and the front door feed.)

If this was a real-world interface, we’d additionally want to know…

How to control the volume?
How to control the gain? (For a brighter or darker image, as needed)
How does the camera signal that it is on and recording?
If the cameras can be aimed, how?

I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of. Two inputs is not enough. It’s easy to imagine the lever delivering a floating point value between 0 and 1, like a volume control, but that doesn’t map to the discrete functions needed for the simplest functions of off/on and channel selection.

50 Ways to Love Your Lever

It’s possible that the arm position is not binary up-or-down but continuous, with angles mapped to meanings, and held positions setting the boundaries of input. Like, pull it 3° and hold for a second and that puts the system in the select-new-channel state. Or maybe each of the Transsexual keyboard keys is mapped to individual angles, like A = 85–90°, B = 80–84°, and so on. The user would have to move it to the right angle and hold it there for a second for that character to be sent to the processor before returning it to 90° as an “ENTER” function. This has historical precedent in the Dial Telegraph by Louis Francois Clement Breguet in the mid-1800s. Pictured below is the sending mechanism for such a system, which gives an idea about how it worked.

An image of the Dial Telegraph as described in the text.

Dial telegraph by Louis Francois Clement Breguet

But note that the usability in the telegraph is provided by a printed guide below the lever that shows what regions map to what letters, so it’s easy to position and confirm that the arm is in the right spot before pressing the commit control. It would be a terrible experience to try and use this without guides or feedback. It would require too much precision and be very error prone.

With no markings on or near the arm, I can’t backworld this into any semblance of sense or usability. Especially since Janet seems to have no problem using it when she encounters the device.

Before anyone comes at me with, “Maybe Transylvanians have more precision and memory and…”, remember we design for humans, and must evaluate interfaces from that POV.

Orientation

I never felt the lever in action, of course, and the prop is almost certainly long since destroyed, but another side note is that… if the lever doesn’t snap in place at the top, and doesn’t have a spring to hold it there, it’s error prone for it to be oriented vertically. Someone could bump it and cause it to fall down, causing some kind of mischief. If it has to be a loose lever, a horizontal orientation of the control would help remove gravity as a complicating factor.

Differentiation of the set of controls is a next concern, and as you’ll read in a later post, I quite like the horizontal orientation of the Triple Contact Electro Magnet lever, which is mounted to the panel just below. Having two horizontal controls, one on top of the other, isn’t great differentiation, even when the control is tightly chunked with its actuator. If it was sticking with this vertical lever for differentiation, then a spring-return lever would make more sense. n.b. It wouldn’t solve the missing controls problem.

A hint of agency?

Screenshot from the movie showing a close up of the lab monitor showing static.

Screenshot from the movie showing a close up of the lab monitor showing Dr. Scott.

There is a curious moment when Dr. Scott first appears on the laboratory monitor. The shot is close up on the monitor, so it’s hard to tell if it was due to some action a character took, but the screen goes from staticky to the channel showing Dr. Scott. Many modern systems do that—think of how Zoom automatically switches to the camera showing the current speaker—but it would take a person doing vigilant technical direction back in 1975.

Screenshot from the movie showing Riff Raff discovering Dr. Scott outside the castle via the laboratory monitor. He is speaking and returning the lever to its vertical position.

I’m unprepared to ascribe context awareness to the design of these interfaces, but it would be way ahead of its time if it did. After the close-up shot, a pulled back shot shows Riff Raff returning the lever to vertical. This implies he was there off camera pulling the lever in the first shot, but the film does not show what signal might have had him reaching for it in the first place, or what he did to select the channel where Dr. Scott was shown.

So, in the end, the monitors are a narrative interface, conveying the voyeurism and communication plot moments. Their interfaces are handwaves that enable “character sees thing” beats, and we have to leave them as such.

Maybe we’ll fare better with The Vivification Interfaces

Sci-fi Spacesuits: Audio Comms

3 Aug 2021 by Christopher Noessel

A special subset of spacesuit interfaces is the communication subsystems. I wrote a whole chapter about Communications in Make It So, but spacesuit comms bear special mention, since they’re usually used in close physical proximity but still must be mediated by technology, the channels for detailed control are clumsy and packed, and these communicators are often being overseen by a mission control center of some sort. You’d think this is rich territory, but spoiler: There’s not a lot of variation to study.

Every single spacesuit in the survey has audio. This is so ubiquitous and accepted that, after 1950, no filmmaker has thought the need to explain it or show an interface for it. So you’d think that we’d see a lot of interactions.

*Destination Moon* (1950): Woody learns from the narrator that without air, he needs to extend his radio antenna in order to communicate in space. (Note: You’re not missing something, this live action film had an animated explanatory sequence starring Woody Woodpecker.)

Spacesuit communications in sci-fi tend to be many-to-many with no apparent means of control. Not even a push-to-mute if you sneezed into your mic. It’s as if the spacewalkers were in a group, merely standing near each other in air, chatting. No push-to-talk or volume control is seen. Communication with Mission Control is automatic. No audio cues are given to indicate distance, direction, or source of the sound, or to select a subset of recipients.

The one seeming exception to the many-to-many communication is seen in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. As Boomer is operating a ship above a ground crew, shining a light down on them for visibility, she has the following conversation with Tyrol.

*Battlestar Galactica* (Season 1, Episode 2, “Water” 2004): Boomer and Tyrol confirm contact with each other.

Tyrol
Raptor 478, this is DC-1, I have you in my sights.
Boomer
Copy that, DC-1. I have you in sight.
Tyrol
Understood.
Boomer
How’s it looking there? Can you tell what happened?
Tyrol
Lieutenant, don’t worry…about my team. I got things under control.
Boomer
Copy that, DC-1. I feel better knowing you’re on it.

Then, when her copilot gives her a look about what she has just said, she says curtly to him, “Watch the light, you’re off target.” In this exchange there is clear evidence that the copilot has heard the first conversation, but it appears that her comment to him is addressed to him and not for the others to hear. Additionally, we do not hear chatter going on between the ground grew during this exchange. Unfortunately, we do not see any of the conversationalists touch a control to give us an idea about how they switch between these modes. So, you know, still nothing.

More recent films, especially in the MCU, has seen all sorts of communication controlled by voice with the magic of General AI…pause for gif…

…but as I mention more and more, once you have a General AI in the picture, we leave the realm of critique-able interactions. Because an AI did it.

In short, sci-fi just doesn’t care about showing audio controls in sci-fi spacesuits, and isn’t likely to start caring anytime soon. As always, if you know of something outside my survey, please mention it.

For reference, in the real world, a NASA astronaut has direct control over the volume of audio that she hears, using potentiometer volume controls. (Curiously the numbers on them are not backwards, unlike the rest of the controls.)

A spacewalker uses the COMM dial switch mode selector at the top of the DCM to select between three different frequencies of wireless communication, each of which broadcasts to each other and the vehicle. When an astronaut is on one of the first two channels, transmission is voice-activated. But a backup, “party line” channel requires push-to-talk, and this is what the push-to-talk control is for.

By default, all audio is broadcast to all other spacewalkers, the vehicle, and Mission Control. To speak privately, without Mission Control hearing, spacewalkers don’t have an engineered option. But if one of the radio frequency bands happens to be suffering a loss of signal to Mission Control, she can use this technological blind spot to talk with some degree of privacy.

8 Reasons The Voight-Kampff Machine is shit (and a redesign to fix it)

10 Dec 2019 by Christopher Noessel

Distinguishing replicants from humans is a tricky business. Since they are indistinguishable biologically, it requires an empathy test, during which the subject hears empathy-eliciting scenarios and watched carefully for telltale signs such as, “capillary dilation—the so-called blush response…fluctuation of the pupil…involuntary dilation of the iris.” To aid the blade runner in this examination, they use a portable machine called the Voight-Kampff machine, named, presumably, for its inventors.

The device is the size of a thick laptop computer, and rests flat on the table between the blade runner and subject. When the blade runner prepares the machine for the test, they turn it on, and a small adjustable armature rises from the machine, the end of which is an intricate piece of hardware, housing a powerful camera, glowing red.

The blade runner trains this camera on one of the subject’s eyes. Then, while reading from the playbook book of scenarios, they keep watch on a large monitor, which shows an magnified image of the subject’s eye. (Ostensibly, anyway. More on this below.) A small bellows on the subject’s side of the machine raises and lowers. On the blade runner’s side of the machine, a row of lights reflect the volume of the subject’s speech. Three square, white buttons sit to the right of the main monitor. In Leon’s test we see Holden press the leftmost of the three, and the iris in the monitor becomes brighter, illuminated from some unseen light source. The purpose of the other two square buttons is unknown. Two smaller monochrome monitors sit to the left of the main monitor, showing moving but otherwise inscrutable forms of information.

In theory, the system allows the blade runner to more easily watch for the minute telltale changes in the eye and blush response, while keeping a comfortable social distance from the subject. Substandard responses reveal a lack of empathy and thereby a high probability that the subject is a replicant. Simple! But on review, it’s shit. I know this is going to upset fans, so let me enumerate the reasons, and then propose a better solution.

-2. Wouldn’t a genetic test make more sense?

If the replicants are genetically engineered for short lives, wouldn’t a genetic test make more sense? Take a drop of blood and look for markers of incredibly short telomeres or something.

-1. Wouldn’t an fMRI make more sense?

An fMRI would reveal empathic responses in the inferior frontal gyrus, or cognitive responses in the ventromedial prefrontal gyrus. (The brain structures responsible for these responses.) Certinaly more expensive, but more certain.

0. Wouldn’t a metal detector make more sense?

If you are testing employees to detect which ones are the murdery ones and which ones aren’t, you might want to test whether they are bringing a tool of murder with them. Because once they’re found out, they might want to murder you. This scene should be rewritten such that Leon leaps across the desk and strangles Holden, IMHO. It would make him, and other blade runners, seem much more feral and unpredictable.

(OK, those aren’t interface issues but seriously wtf. Onward.)

1. Labels, people

Controls needs labels. Especially when the buttons have no natural affordance and the costs of experimentation to discover the function are high. Remembering the functions of unlabeled controls adds to the cognitive load for a user who should be focusing on the person across the table. At least an illuminated button helps signal the state, so that, at least, is something.

2. It should be less intimidating

The physical design is quite intimidating: The way it puts a barrier in between the blade runner and subject. The fact that all the displays point away from the subject. The weird intricacy of the camera, its ominous HAL-like red glow. Regular readers may note that the eyepiece is red-on-black and pointy. That is to say, it is aposematic. That is to say, it looks evil. That is to say, intimidating.

I’m no emotion-scientist, but I’m pretty sure that if you’re testing for empathy, you don’t want to complicate things by introducing intimidation into the equation. Yes, yes, yes, the machine works by making the subject feel like they have to defend themselves from the accusations in the ethical dilemmas, but that stress should come from the content, not the machine.

2a. Holden should be less intimidating and not tip his hand

While we’re on this point, let me add that Holden should be less intimidating, too. When Holden tells Leon that a tortoise and a turtle are the same thing, (Narrator: They aren’t) he happens to glance down at the machine. At that moment, Leon says, “I’ve never seen a turtle,” a light shines on the pupil and the iris contracts. Holden sees this and then gets all “ok, replicant” and becomes hostile toward Leon.

In case it needs saying: If you are trying to tell whether the person across from you is a murderous replicant, and you suddenly think the answer is yes, you do not tip your hand and let them know what you know. Because they will no longer have a reason to hide their murderyness. Because they will murder you, and then escape, to murder again. That’s like, blade runner 101, HOLDEN.

3. It should display history

The glance moment points out another flaw in the interface. Holden happens to be looking down at the machine at that moment. If he wasn’t paying attention, he would have missed the signal. The machine needs to display the interview over time, and draw his attention to troublesome moments. That way, when his attention returns to the machine, he can see that something important happened, even if it’s not happening now, and tell at a glance what the thing was.

4. It should track the subject’s eyes

Holden asks Leon to stay very still. But people are bound to involuntarily move as their attention drifts to the content of the empathy dilemmas. Are we going to add noncompliance-guilt to the list of emotional complications? Use visual recognition algorithms and high-resolution cameras to just track the subject’s eyes no matter how they shift in their seat.

5. Really? A bellows?

The bellows doesn’t make much sense either. I don’t believe it could, at the distance it sits from the subject, help detect “capillary dilation” or “ophthalmological measurements”. But it’s certainly creepy and Terry Gilliam-esque. It adds to the pointless intimidation.

6. It should show the actual subject’s eye

The eye color that appears on the monitor (hazel) matches neither Leon’s (a striking blue) or Rachel’s (a rich brown). Hat tip to Typeset in the Future for this observation. His is a great review.

7. It should visualize things in ways that make it easy to detect differences in key measurements

Even if the inky, dancing black blob is meant to convey some sort of information, the shape is too organic for anyone to make meaningful readings from it. Like seriously, what is this meant to convey?

The spectrograph to the left looks a little more convincing, but it still requires the blade runner to do all the work of recognizing when things are out of expected ranges.

8. The machine should, you know, help them

The machine asks its blade runner to do a lot of work to use it. This is visual work and memory work and even work estimating when things are out of norms. But this is all something the machine could help them with. Fortunately, this is a tractable problem, using the mighty powers of logic and design.

Pupillary diameter

People are notoriously bad at estimating the sizes of things by sight. Computers, however, are good at it. Help the blade runner by providing a measurement of the thing they are watching for: pupillary diameter. (n.b. The script speaks of both iris constriction and pupillary diameter, but these are the same thing.) Keep it convincing and looking cool by having this be an overlay on the live video of the subject’s eye.

So now there’s some precision to work with. But as noted above, we don’t want to burden the user’s memory with having to remember stuff, and we don’t want them to just be glued to the screen, hoping they don’t miss something important. People are terrible at vigilance tasks. Computers are great at them. The machine should track and display the information from the whole session.

Note that the display illustrates radius, but displays diameter. That buys some efficiencies in the final interface.

Now, with the data-over-time, the user can glance to see what’s been happening and a precise comparison of that measurement over time. But, tracking in detail, we quickly run out of screen real estate. So let’s break the display into increments with differing scales.

There may be more useful increments, but microseconds and seconds feel pretty convincing, with the leftmost column compressing gradually over time to show everything from the beginning of the interview. Now the user has a whole picture to look at. But this still burdens them into noticing when these measurements are out of normal human ranges. So, let’s plot the threshold, and note when measurements fall outside of that. In this case, it feels right that replicants display less that normal pupillary dilation, so it’s a lower-boundary threshold. The interface should highlight when the measurement dips below this.

Blush

I think that covers everything for the pupillary diameter. The other measurement mentioned in the dialogue is capillary dilation of the face, or the “so-called blush response.” As we did for pupillary diameter, let’s also show a measurement of the subject’s skin temperature over time as a line chart. (You might think skin color is a more natural measurement, but for replicants with a darker skin tone than our two pasty examples Leon and Rachel, temperature via infrared is a more reliable metric.) For visual interest, let’s show thumbnails from the video. We can augment the image with degree-of-blush. Reduce the image to high contrast grayscale, use visual recognition to isolate the face, and then provide an overlay to the face that illustrates the degree of blush.

But again, we’re not just looking for blush changes. No, we’re looking for blush compared to human norms for the test. It would look different if we were looking for more blushing in our subject than humans, but since the replicants are less empathetic than humans, we would want to compare and highlight measurements below a threshold. In the thumbnails, the background can be colored to show the median for expected norms, to make comparisons to the face easy. (Shown in the drawing to the right, below.) If the face looks too pale compared to the norm, that’s an indication that we might be looking at a replicant. Or a psychopath.

So now we have solid displays that help the blade runner detect pupillary diameter and blush over time. But it’s not that any diameter changes or blushing is bad. The idea is to detect whether the subject has less of a reaction than norms to what the blade runner is saying. The display should be annotating what the blade runner has said at each moment in time. And since human psychology is a complex thing, it should also track video of the blade runner’s expressions as well, since, as we see above, not all blade runners are able to maintain a poker face. HOLDEN.

Anyway, we can use the same thumbnail display of the face, without augmentation. Below that we can display the waveform (because they look cool), and speech-to-text the words that are being spoken. To ensure that the blade runner’s administration of the text is not unduly influencing the results, let’s add an overlay to the ideal intonation targets. Despite evidence in the film, let’s presume Holden is a trained professional, and he does not stray from those targets, so let’s skip designing the highlight and recourse-for-infraction for now.

Finally, since they’re working from a structured script, we can provide a “chapter” marker at the bottom for easy reference later.

Now we can put it all together, and it looks like this. One last thing we can do to help the blade runner is to highlight when all the signals indicate replicant-ness at once. This signal can’t be too much, or replicants being tested would know from the light on the blade runner’s face when their jig is up, and try to flee. Or murder. HOLDEN.

For this comp, I added a gray overlay to the column where pupillary and blush responses both indicated trouble. A visual designer would find some more elegant treatment.

If we were redesigning this from scratch, we could specify a wide display to accomodate this width. But if we are trying to squeeze this display into the existing prop from the movie, here’s how we could do it.

Note the added labels for the white squares. I picked some labels that would make sense in the context. “Calibrate” and “record” should be obvious. The idea behind “mark” is an easy button for the blade runner to press when they see something that looks weird, like when doctors manually annotate cardiograph output.

Lying to Leon

There’s one more thing we can add to the machine that would help out, and that’s a display for the subject. Recall the machine is meant to test for replicant-ness, which happens to equate to murdery-ness. A positive result from the machine needs to be handled carefully so what happens to Holden in the movie doesn’t happen. I mentioned making the positive-overlay subtle above, but we can also make a placebo display on the subject’s side of the interface.

The visual hierarchy of this should make the subject feel like its purpose is to help them, but the real purpose is to make them think that everything’s fine. Given the script, I’d say a teleprompt of the empathy dilemma should take up the majority of this display. Oh, they think, this is to help me understand what’s being said, like a closed caption. Below the teleprompt, at a much smaller scale, a bar at the bottom is the real point.

On the left of this bar, a live waveform of the audio in the room helps the subject know that the machine is testing things live. In the middle, we can put one of those bouncy fuiget displays that clutters so many sci-fi interfaces. It’s there to be inscrutable, but convince the subject that the machine is really sophisticated. (Hey, a diegetic fuiget!) Lastly—and this is the important part—An area shows that everything is “within range.” This tells the subject that they can be at ease. This is good for the human subject, because they know they’re innocent. And if it’s a replicant subject, this false comfort protects the blade runner from sudden murder. This test might flicker or change occasionally to something ambiguous like “at range,” to convey that it is responding to real world input, but it would never change to something incriminating.

This way, once the blade runner has the data to confirm that the subject is a replicant, they can continue to the end of the module as if everything was normal, thank the replicant for their time, and let them leave the room believing they passed the test. Then the results can be sent to the precinct and authorizations returned so retirement can be planned with the added benefit of the element of surprise.

OK

Look, I’m sad about this, too. The Voight-Kampff machine is cool. It fits very well within the art direction of the Blade Runner universe. This coolness burned the machine into my memory when I saw this film the first dozen times, but despite that, it just doesn’t stand up to inspection. It’s not hopeless, but does need a lot of thinkwork and design to make it really fit to task, and convincing to us in the audience.

Frito’s F’n Car interface

13 Nov 2018 by Christopher Noessel

When Frito is driving Joe and Rita away from the cops, Joe happens to gesture with his hand above the car window, where a vending machine he happens to be passing spots the tattoo. Within seconds two harsh beeps sound in the car and a voice says, “You are harboring a fugitive named NOT SURE. Please, pull over and wait for the police to incarcerate your passenger.”

Frito’s car begins slowing down, and the dashboard screen shows a picture of Not Sure’s ID card and big red text zooming in a loop reading “PULL OVER”

The car interface has a column of buttons down the left reading:

WTF?

BEER

FART FAN

HOME
GIRLS

At the bottom is a square of icons: car, radiation, person, and the fourth is obscured by something in the foreground. Across the bottom is Frito’s car ID “FRITO’S F’N CAR” which appears to be a label for a system status of “EVERYTHING’S A-OK, BRO”, a button labeled CHECK INGN [sic], another labeled LOUDER, and a big green circle reading GO.

But the car doesn’t wait for him to pull over. With some tiny beeps it slows to a stop by itself. Frito says, “It turned off my battery!” Moments after they flee the car, it is converged upon by a ring of police officers with weapons loaded (including a rocket launcher pointed backward.)

Visual Design

Praise where it’s due: Zooming is the strongest visual attention-getting signals there is (symmetrical expansion is detected on the retina within 80 milliseconds!) and while I can’t find the source from which I learned it, I recall that blinking is somewhere in the top 5. Combining these with an audio signal means it’s hard to miss this critical signal. So that’s good.

But then. Ugh. The fonts. The buttons on the chrome seem to be some free Blade Runner font knock off, the text reading “PULL OVER” is in some headachey clipped-corner freeware font that neither contrasts nor compliments the Blade Jogger font, or whatever it is. I can’t quite hold the system responsible for the font of the IPPA licence, but I just threw up a little into my Flaturin because of that rounded-top R.

Then there’s the bad-90s skeuomorphic, Bevel & Emboss buttons that might be defended for making the interactive parts apparent, except that this same button treatment is given to the label Frito’s F’n Car, which has no obvious reason why it would ever need to be pressed. It’s also used on the CHECK INGN and LOUDER buttons, taking their ADA-insulting contrast ratios and absolutely wrecking any readability.

I try not to second-guess designer’s intentions, but I’m pretty sure this is all deliberate. Part of the illustration of a world without much sense. Certainly no design sense.

In-Car Features

What about those features? NAV is pretty standard function, and having a HOME button is a useful shortcut. On current versions of Google Maps there’s an Explore Places Near You Function, which lists basic interests like Restaurants, Bars, and Events, and has a more menu with a big list of interests and services. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Frito has pressed GIRLS and BEER enough that it’s floated to the top nav.

That leaves only three “novel” buttons to think about: WTF, LOUDER, and FART FAN.

WTF?

If I have to guess, the WTF button is an all-purpose help button. Like a GM OnStar, but less well branded. Frito can press it and get connected to…well, I guess some idiot to see if they can help him with something. Not bad to have, though this probably should be higher in the visual hierarchy.

LOUDER

This bit of interface comedy is hilarious because, well, there’s no volume down affordance on the interface. Think of the “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” kind of idiocy. Of course, it could be that the media is on zero volume, and so it couldn’t be turned down any more, so the LOUDER button filled up the whole space, but…

The smarter convention is to leave the button in place and signal a disabled state, and
Given everything else about the interface, that’s giving the diegetic designer a WHOLE lot of credit. (And our real-world designer a pat on the back for subtle hilarity.)

FART FAN

This button is a little potty humor, and probably got a few snickers from anyone who caught it because amygdala, but I’m going to boldly say this is the most novel, least dumb thing about Frito’s F’n Car interface.

Pictured: A sulfuric gas nebula. Love you, NASA!

People fart. It stinks. Unless you have active charcoal filters under the fabric, you can be in for an unpleasant scramble to reclaim breathable air. The good news is that getting the airflow right to clear the car of the smell has, yes, been studied, well, if not by science, at least scientifically. The bad news is that it’s not a simple answer.

Your car’s built in extractor won’t be enough, so just cranking the A/C won’t cut it.

Rolling down windows in a moving aerodynamic car may not do the trick due to something called the boundary layer of air that “clings” to the surface of the car.

Rolling down windows in a less-aerodynamic car can be problematic because of the Helmholtz effect (the wub-wub-wub air pressure) and that makes this a risky tactic.
Opening a sunroof (if you have one) might be good, but pulls the stench up right past noses, so not ideal either.

The best strategy—according to that article and conversation amongst my less squeamish friends—is to crank the AC, then open the driver’s window a couple of inches, and then the rear passenger window half way.

But this generic strategy changes with each car, the weather (seriously, temperature matters, and you wouldn’t want to do this in heavy precipitation), and the skankness of the fart. This is all a LOT to manage when one’s eyes are meant to be on the road and you’re in an nauseated panic. Having the cabin air just refresh at the touch of one button is good for road safety.

If it’s so smart, then, why don’t we have Fart Fan panic buttons in our cars today?

I suspect car manufacturers don’t want the brand associations of having a button labeled FART FAN on their dashboards. But, IMHO, this sounds like a naming problem, not some intractable engineering problem. How about something obviously overpolite, like “Fast freshen”? I’m no longer in the travel and transportation business, but if you know someone at one of these companies, do the polite thing and share this with them.

Idiocracy-car — Another way to deal with the problem, in the meantime.

So aside from the interface considerations, there are also some strategic ones to discuss with the remote kill switch, but that deserves it’s own post, next.

Snitch phone

23 Jan 2018 by Christopher Noessel

If you’re reading these chronologically, let me note here that I had to skip Bea Arthur’s marvelous turn as Ackmena, as she tends the bar and rebuffs the amorous petitions of the lovelorn, hole-in-the-head Krelman, before singing her frustrated patrons out of the bar when a curfew is announced. To find the next interface of note, we have to forward to when…

Han and Chewie arrive, only to find a Stormtrooper menacing Lumpy. Han knocks the blaster out of his hand, and when the Stormtrooper dives to retrieve it, he falls through the bannister of the tree house and to his death.

Why aren’t these in any way affiiiiixxxxxxeeeeeeed?

Han enters the home and wishes everyone a Happy Life Day. Then he bugs out.

But I still have to return for the insane closing number. Hold me.

Then Saun Dann returns to the home just before a general alert comes over the family Imperial Issue Media Console.

This is a General Alert. Calling Officer B4711. Officer B4711. We are unable to reach you on your comlink. Is there a problem. [sic] You are instructed to turn on your comlink immediately.

Dann tells the family he can handle it. He walks to the TV and pulls a card out of his wallet. He inserts it into the console, mashes a few buttons and turns his attention to the screen. After a moment of op-art static, General Alert person appears. He says, “We have two way communication, traitor Saun Dann. Is this a report about the missing trooper?”

Dann (like so many rebels) lies, saying the stormtrooper robbed the house and fled for the hills. GA says, “Very well, we’ll send out a search party.” Sean thanks him and the exchange is over. Sean hits a button, pulls his card out of the console, and returns it to his wallet.

Sadly I must bypass the plot questions about the body of the Stormtrooper that is still lying in the forest floor beneath them that will surely be found, or that GA will eventually not find B4711 in the forest and return demanding answers, or why everyone is acting like welp that’s fixed. For this blog is about interfaces.

Whether the card was meant as identification or payment, the interaction is pretty decent. Saun has no trouble fitting it in the slot, and apparently he has no trouble recalling the number to dial the Empire. The same guy in the message answers the call quickly. After the exchange, it’s quick to wrap up. Pull out card, and call is over. Seriously, that’s as short and simple as we could make it.

What was the card for?

If it was payment, we would expect some charges to appear during and after the fact, so let’s just presume it was an identification card for the Empire to track. Since the Empire is evil, they might hide or not provide feedback that the caller has been identified. So it’s not diegetically surprising to note that there’s none.

For all the interfaces that are utter crap in this show, this one actually passes muster. It tempts me to establish some sort of law—that the more mundane interfaces in a show will always be the more believable ones. I’ll think on that. It would need a name.

If I was to add any improvement, it would be to not burden the citizen’s memory with remembering the general alert or how to act on it. What if you’d just caught the end of it? Rather than burdening memory, the Empire could add a crawl to the feed, that persistently repeats the call to action including contact information. Persuasively, it would be an annoyance that would cause citizens watching TV to really want B4711 to hurry up and turn his damn comlink on, or for someone to rat him out.

There are probably some fascist tactics for incentivizing either the Stormtrooper or a snitch’s compliance, but I’m not a fascist, so let’s not go there.

Instead let’s rejoice that there is but one more interface to review, and we can stop with the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Ministry of Art detector gate

25 Apr 2017 by Christopher Noessel

ChildrenofMen-Artgate-01

Jumping back in the film a bit, we’re going to visit the Ministry of Art. When Theo goes there to visit his brother, after the car pulls to the front of the secured building, Theo steps out and walks toward a metal-detector gate.

Its quite high, about 3 meters tall. The height helps to reinforce the notion that this is a public space.

This principle, that short ceilings are personal, and high ceilings are public, is I believe a well-established one in architectural design. Read the Alexandrian pattern if you’d like to read more about it.
Is it a public space? It is, since it’s a Ministry. But it isn’t, since he joins his brother in what looks like a rich person’s private dining room. I was always a bit confused by what this place was meant to be. Perhaps owning to The Dark Times, Nigel has cited Minister rights and cordoned off part of the Tate Modern to live in. If anyone can explain this, please speak up.
On the downside, the height makes the text more out of sight and harder to read by the people meant to be reading it.

The distance is balanced by the motion graphics of the translucent sign atop the gate. Animated red graphics point the direction of ingress, show a security stripe pattern, and provide text instructions.

Motion is a very strong attention-getting signal, and combined with the red colors, does all the attention-getting that the height risks. But even that’s not a critical issue, as there is of course a guard standing by to ensure his understanding and compliance.

ChildrenofMen-Artgate-05

Note that there is no interaction here (which is the usual filter for this blog), but since I’m publishing an interview with the designer of this and the Kubris interface soon, I thought I’d give it a quick nod.

Jasper’s home alarm

22 Mar 2017 by Christopher Noessel

When Theo, Kee, and Miriam flee the murderous Fishes, they take refuge in Jasper’s home for the night. They are awoken in the morning by Jasper’s sentry system.

A loud cacophonous alarm sounds, made up of what sounds like recorded dog barks, bells clanging, and someone banging a stick on a metal trash can lid. Jasper explains to everyone in the house that “It’s the alarm! Someone’s breaking in!”

They gather around a computer screen with large speakers on either side. The screen shows four video feeds labeled ROAD A, FOREST A, FRONT DOOR, and ROAD B. Labels reading MOTION DETECTED <> blink at the bottom of the ROAD A and ROAD B feeds, where we can see members of the Fishes removing the brush that hides the driveway to Jasper’s house.

The date overlays the upper right hand corner of the screen, 06-DEC-2027, 08:10:58.

Across the bottom is a control panel of white numbers and icons on red backgrounds.

A radio button control for the number of video feeds to be displayed. Though we are seeing the 4-up display, the icon does not appear to be different than the rest.
16 enumerated icons, the purpose for which is unclear.
Video control icons for reverse, stop, play, and fast forward.
Three buttons with gray backgrounds and icons.
A wide button blinking MASTER ALARM

The scene cuts to Jasper’s rushing to the car outside the home, where none of the cacophony can be heard.

Similar to his car dashoard, it makes sense that Jasper has made this alarm himself. This might explain the clunky layout and somewhat inscrutable icons. (What do the numbers do? What about that flower on the gray background?)

The three jobs of an intruder alarm

Jasper’s alarm is OK. It certainly does the job of grabbing the household’s attention, which is the first job of an alarm, and does it without alerting the intruders, as we see in the shot outside the house.

It could do a bit better at the second job of an alarm, which is to inform the household of the nature of the problem. That they have to gather around the monitor takes precious time that could be used for making themselves safer. It could be improved by removing this requirement.

If Jasper had added more information to the audio alarm, even so basic as a prerecorded “Motion on the road! Motion on the road!” then they might not have needed to gather around the monitor at all.
If the relevant video feeds could be piped to wearable devices, phones, or their car, then they can fill in their understanding at the same time that they are taking steps to getting the hell out of there.
Having the artificial intelligence that we have in actual-world 2017 (much less speculative 2027), we know that narrow AI can process that video to have many more details in the broadcast message. “Motion on the road! I see three cars and at least a dozen armed men!”

There is arguably a third job of an advanced alarm, and this is to help the household understand the best course of action. This can be problematic when the confidence of the recommendation is low. But if the AI can confidently make a recommendation, it can use whatever actuators it has to help them along their way.

It could be informational, such as describing the best option. The audio alarm could encourage them to “Take the back road!” It could even alert the police (though in the world of Children of Men, Jasper would not trust them and they may be disinclined to care.)
The alarm could give some parameters and best-practice recommendations like, “You have 10 minutes to be in the car! Save only yourselves, carry nothing!”
It could keep updating the situation and the countdown so the household does not have to monitor it.
It can physically help as best it can, like remotely starting and positioning cars for them.

This can get conceptually tricky as the best course of action may be conditional, e.g. “If you can get to the car in 5 minutes, then escape is your best option, but if it takes longer or you have defenses, then securing the home and alerting the police is the better bet.” But that may be too much to process in the moment, and for a household that does not rehearse response scenarios, the simpler instruction may be safer.

Syd’s dash display

26 Jan 2017 by Christopher Noessel

childrenofmen-028

If Jasper’s car is aftermarket, Syd’s built-in display seems to be more consumer-savvy. It is a blue electroluminescent flat display built into the dashboard. It has more glanceable information with a cleaner information hierarchy. It has no dangerous keyboard entry. All we see of the display in these few glimpses is the speedometer, but even that’s enough to illustrate these differences.

Sci-fi interfaces

Stop watching sci-fi. Start using it.

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