Hi Folks --

I like the designation of this as a "true story". Actually, it was 
one of the main jokes at PARC about UI and we were pretty sure that 
it was only partly true. We heard the story from elsewhere and I have 
always told this joke as happening to someone else not to me. (It was 
actually a flight from Mexico City to the Yucatan peninsula, etc.) So 
here are some interesting restructured memories in the retelling. 
However, it's wonderful that the gist and the point of the joke were 
perfectly remembered. This is why allegories, etc., were heavily used 
before writing and printing. The stories always get changed, but 
usually the gist remains intact.

Cheers,

Alan

At 11:33 AM +0100 3/9/04, Bruce O'Neel wrote:
>Somewhat Off Topic, or not as the case may be given our UI and look
>discussions.
>
>>From RISKS 23.26
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 08:50:20 -0500
>From: David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>
>Subject: An interesting airplane user interface
>
>I found the following anecdote in Edward Tufte's message board:
>   http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?
>   msg_id=0001Gl&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e
>
>   Alan Kay and User Interfaces
>
>   I attended the course in Boston yesterday, and enjoyed it very much.  Made
>   me think about the following story which might spur some discussion or
>   comments here. It seems related to the overall theme here.
>
>   In 1985 I attended an OOPSLA (Object oriented programming languages ...)
>   conference. Alan Kay (PARC/Smalltalk/ Apple/Macintosh/...) gave a
>   presentation. Alan told the following true story:
>
>   He once flew down to Mexico on vacation, to some lonely place on the
>   California peninsula for surfing etc. A pilot was supposed to come in a
>   week to pick him up at a rural landing strip. Alan got there on time,
>   waited, and eventually the plane, an older DC3, came. When Alan entered
>   the plane he noticed that almost all the instruments had been unscrewed
>   from the panels, pulled out and twisted around in various positions, and
>   were basically standing (or waving) on their cable hoses like flowers on
>   their stems. He got worried, considered exiting the plane, but decided to
>   stay. The pilot, a younger fellow, seemed trustworthy.
>
>   When the plane had reached cruising altitude and speed Alan suddenly "got
>   it" wrt. the instruments. As long as everything was operating correctly,
>   all the needles on the instruments was pointing in the same direction! It
>   was very easy to spot if anything out of the ordinary was going on, and
>   what that might be.
>
>   This story has stuck with me as a super example of adapting the technology
>   to what we people are good at, as opposed to the other way around which is
>   too often the case.
>
>   Enjoy, Harald
>
>With the multitude of gauges in a cockpit this is a brilliant way to quickly
>scan the status of the various components of the airplane.  The display of
>information is quite important in complex systems and has been discussed in
>RISKS before (e.g., RISKS-23.12, the whole "Bubba" debate).
>
>
>--
>"We didn't just track down that bug, we left evidence of its extermination as
>a warning to other bugs" - Dan Lyke - flutterby
>
>Bruce O'Neel                       phone:  +41 22 950 91 57
>INTEGRAL Science Data Centre               +41 22 950 91 00 (switchb.)
>Chemin d'Ecogia 16                 fax:    +41 22 950 91 35
>CH-1290 VERSOIX                    e-mail: Bruce.Oneel at obs.unige.ch
>Switzerland                        WWW:    http://isdc.unige.ch/


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