[SystemSafety] AVs vs. driver aids ... some more WTF questions
Olwen Morgan
olwen at phaedsys.com
Tue Jul 23 15:13:17 CEST 2019
On 23/07/2019 13:14, Steve Tockey wrote:
> <snip>
>
> *) if you let human factors people design user interfaces, you will get user interfaces that are easy to use but very difficult to build.
>
> *) If you let technical people design user interfaces, you will get user interfaces that are easy to build but difficult to use.
>
> The proof is left to the reader of which of these two cases applies to the cars you refer to. . .
<snip>
AFAI can see, there's no inherent technical reason why easy-to-use UIs
should be difficult to build. (OK, if you know HMI but are not a
software engineer, you may find it difficult to build, but that's not
the same issue.)
To my mind, a lot of design errors in HMIs arise from trying to
shoe-horn the HMI code into the functional logic control flow or
vice-versa. One way to avoid this is to design the HMI and functional
logic as distinct communicating action systems. That way you can have
optimal control structures for both at the expense of needing a
communication protocol between them. You could build HMIs like this
quite straightforwardly by using, for example, Tcl/Tk for the HMI and
Erlang for the core logic. Indeed I'm inclined to think that requiring
different languages for the HMI and functional logic would not be a bad
idea since it would tend to force a design as two communicating actions
systems.
FWIW,
Olwen
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