At dispatch for the central computer, Sandmen monitor a large screen that displays a wireframe plan of the city, including architectural detail and even plants, all color coded using saturated reds, greens, and blues. When a Sandman has accepted the case of a runner, he appears as a yellow dot on the screen. The runner appears as a red dot. Weapons fire can even be seen as a bright flash of blue. The red dots of terminated runners fades from view.

Using the small screens and unlabeled arrays of red and yellow lit buttons situated on an angled panel in front of them, the seated Sandman can send a call out to catch runners, listen to any spoken communications, and respond with text and images.

*UXsigh* What are we going to do with this thing? With an artificial intelligence literally steps behind them, why rely on a slow bunch of humans at all for answering questions and transmitting data? It might be better to just let the Sandmen do what they’re good at, and let the AI handle what it’s good at.

But OK, if it’s really that limited of an Übercomputer and can only focus on whatever is occupying it at the moment, at least make the controls usable by people. Let’s do the hard work of reducing the total number of controls, so they can be clustered all within easy reach rather than spread out so you have to move around just to operate them all. Or use your feet or whatever. Differentiate the controls so they are easy to tell apart by sight and touch rather than this undifferentiated mess. Let’s take out a paint pen and actually label the buttons. Do…do something.

This display could use some rethinking as well. It’s nice that it’s overhead, so that dispatch can be thinking about field strategy rather than ground tactics. But if that’s the case, it could use some design help and some strategic information. How about downplaying the saturation on the things that don’t matter that much, like walls and plants? Then the Sandmen can focus more on the interplay of the Runner and his assailants. Next you could augment the display with information about the runner, and perhaps a best-guess prediction of where they’re likely to run, maybe the health of individuals, or the amount of ammunitition they have.

Which makes me realize that more than anything, this screen could use the hand of a real-time strategy game user interface designer, because that’s what they’re doing. The Sandmen are playing a deadly, deadly video game right here in this room, and they’re using a crappy interface to try and win it.