GPS vs ADF

Thomas Borchert wrote:
I find that those without an engineering
background find it counterintuitive and need a lot of time to get used
to it.

If I may: So what? Who says things in life have to be easy or
"intuitive"?

Wow, you sound like an engineer.

Who says it has to be easy or intuitive? Well, the customer. He's the
one who matters. In the software industry (at least the successful
parts of it) software is tested by intended end-users. When the
software doesn't behave the way they expect, you don't retrain them -
you rewrite the software. Of course the developers always bitch about
this, but it's not a grey area. The customers are right and the
developers are wrong. Unfortunately, in this FAA-driven environment,
the customer doesn't matter.

A GPS does very complex things. So it is complex to use.

I said the same thing when I was told to make the doppler non-invasive
flowmeter simple to use. I was told that it wasn't acceptable, and to
make it easy to use. Seven years later, it's still the industry
leader. You CAN make a device that does complex things easy and
intuitive to use. It's just a lot of work.

Is
any of those people you teach really of the opinion that a CDI or an ADF
are more "intutitive" than a moving map? Yeah, right...

Yes. They are. But not to an engineer.

Michael

Michael,

Wow, you sound like an engineer.

Not quite.


Unfortunately, in this FAA-driven environment,
the customer doesn't matter.

You got that right.

You CAN make a device that does complex things easy and
intuitive to use. It's just a lot of work.

Yes, within limits. What I was trying to get at was that indeed many people
complain about very complex things being, well, complex. I tried to point
out that such is life - and that's what makes it so exciting. I feel there's
a trend to "dumb down" things in an increasingly complex world. And I'm not
a fan of that. I'm not trying to make excuses for bad interface design, not
at all. But in my experience, there are limits to what you can do in that
arena. Also, things simply change. To expect everything to remain the same
in life without any new stuff coming in is, well, not very smart.


Is
any of those people you teach really of the opinion that a CDI or an ADF
are more "intutitive" than a moving map? Yeah, right...

Yes. They are. But not to an engineer.

Excuse me, but that's just not true. Anyone who has gone through instrument
training will tell you that an ADF is anything but intuitive. It's just
something a pilot may be more used to, that's all.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

What I was trying to get at was that indeed many people
complain about very complex things being, well, complex.

The problem is when things are =unnecessarily= complex. This often
results from attempting to impose an inappropriate paradigm on the user
interface, or from some limitations on the hardware, or from an
ill-conceived idea of what "complex" means. (I have an answering
machine that has just one button. It is a pain in the ass to use. The
one that has ten buttons is lots simpler. Each button does one thing.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:
What I was trying to get at was that indeed many people complain about
very complex things being, well, complex.


The problem is when things are =unnecessarily= complex. This often
results from attempting to impose an inappropriate paradigm on the user
interface, or from some limitations on the hardware, or from an
ill-conceived idea of what "complex" means. (I have an answering
machine that has just one button. It is a pain in the ass to use. The
one that has ten buttons is lots simpler. Each button does one thing.

Jose

Panel mount navigators are actually much more complex (and far less
capable) than FMS/LNAV systems on high-end biz jets and modern
airliners. This is the result of cost and panel space limitations in
small, light aircraft.

Jose,

The problem is when things are =unnecessarily= complex.


True.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)