How a WWII bomber created "User Friendly"

[Ringel05]

The article is titled, How the Dumb Design of a WW II Plane Led to the Mackintosh but in reality it's how we began designing products built for us imperfect humans and the two psychologists that started it all.
After WWII Paul Fitts and his colleague Alfonse Chapanis (one of the fathers of ergonomics) were given the records of all the unexplained, actually listed as pilot error B17 crashes during the war to study. Most expected they would arrive at the same conclusions, pilot error but what they eventually discovered wasn't pilot error but instead was design error as Chapanis put it.
Taking into account human nature, especially under stress and the fact that controls for different functions in the aircraft looked and felt exactly the same it was no wonder so many unexplained accidents occurred.
Chapanis eventually designed controls that looked and more importantly felt different, patterns that were designed to be more "natural".

Instead, designing better machines meant figuring how people acted without thinking, in the fog of everyday life, which might never be perfect. You couldn’t assume humans to be perfectly rational sponges for training. You had to take them as they were: distracted, confused, irrational under duress. Only by imagining them at their most limited could you design machines that wouldn’t fail them.

How the Dumb Design of a WWII Plane Led to the Macintosh

 

[Dick Foster]

The article is titled, How the Dumb Design of a WW II Plane Led to the Mackintosh but in reality it's how we began designing products built for us imperfect humans and the two psychologists that started it all.
After WWII Paul Fitts and his colleague Alfonse Chapanis (one of the fathers of ergonomics) were given the records of all the unexplained, actually listed as pilot error B17 crashes during the war to study. Most expected they would arrive at the same conclusions, pilot error but what they eventually discovered wasn't pilot error but instead was design error as Chapanis put it.
Taking into account human nature, especially under stress and the fact that controls for different functions in the aircraft looked and felt exactly the same it was no wonder so many unexplained accidents occurred.
Chapanis eventually designed controls that looked and more importantly felt different, patterns that were designed to be more "natural".

Instead, designing better machines meant figuring how people acted without thinking, in the fog of everyday life, which might never be perfect. You couldn’t assume humans to be perfectly rational sponges for training. You had to take them as they were: distracted, confused, irrational under duress. Only by imagining them at their most limited could you design machines that wouldn’t fail them.

How the Dumb Design of a WWII Plane Led to the Macintosh

This is way landing gear switch handles are shaped like wheels and flap leavers are flat and shaped like a flap in every cockpit of every make of airplane made.

 

[ReinyDays]

I would have thought pilot fatigue ... it's not easy flying all those hours in a four-engined bomber ... then add hundreds of folks on the ground trying to kill you ... if the air crew walks away from a belly landing, it's considered a good one ...

 

[Dick Foster]

I would have thought pilot fatigue ... it's not easy flying all those hours in a four-engined bomber ... then add hundreds of folks on the ground trying to kill you ... if the air crew walks away from a belly landing, it's considered a good one ...

They had autopilots even back then which takes a lot of the fatigue out of flying for long periods.
Flying is long periods of sheer boredom punctuated with brief periods of stark terror.

 

[Sunni Man]

They had autopilots even back then which takes a lot of the fatigue out of flying for long periods.
Flying is long periods of sheer boredom punctuated with brief periods of stark terror.

Bombers during WWll flew a box formation over Europe for protection, and couldn't use auto pilot because they flew very close to each other and continually adjusted their position and altitude. But bombers in the Pacific theater could take advantage of autopilot when flying long distances across the ocean to bomb Japan and other islands. ...

 

[ReinyDays]

I would use every spare heart-beat to look for enemy fighters ...