BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

This is the message that, on January 13th, 2018, got pushed to Hawaiians phones as a text alert. Unsurprisingly, many took this alert seriously, seeking shelter, and trying to call loved ones, saying their last goodbyes.

As it turned out, no missile was inbound. Instead, a state employee had accidentally triggered the alert. Soon after, he was fired.

Whenever something like this happens, we’re quick to want to know what happened, and who to blame. “Human error” is a popular way to say that someone made a mistake, and caused something bad to happen. What’s rarely talked about is why the mistake was able to happen in the first place.

The user interface for the emergency broadcast system is terribly confusing. Safe testing options are visually the same as the real thing, making it easy to accidentally select the wrong one. There were no safeguards in place to ensure an actual alert should be sent out.

And this is rarely the only time bad design has caused an accident, or even killed someone. Actor Anton Yelchin, of Star Trek fame, was crushed by his car, partly due to a confusingly designed shift lever. Many patients have died preventable deaths because the user interfaces in hospitals are a confusing mess.

There’s no easy cure for bad design. But even small things, that seem to not matter much in the grand scheme, can make a crucial difference in situations where mistakes are more likely.

So, if you see a bad design, complain to the designers, and the manufacturer. It’s on them to make it better. And it might just prevent another accident.

Other interesting links from around the web:

• Spiders Use Earth’s Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles — Yes, Spiders can fly. Beware!
• The Dunning-Kruger Effect: we are all confident idiots — The more you know, the more you also know what you don’t know.
• Secrets of Cruise Ships From Crew Codes to Sex to Norovirus — Everything you (didn’t) want to know about cruise ships.
• Sonic doom: how noise pollution kills thousands each year — Sometimes, it seems everything we’ve done as a civilization is coming back to kill us.

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Those grainy Moon photos from the 60s? The actual high-res images looked so much better.