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ing, hit the seawall, then the runway surface, and then spun around. It was a miracle only three people were killed, given the extent of the damage to the airplane and the fire afterward. What we don’t know at this point is why the plane came in so low and so slow. Was it pilot error? Was the autopilot not functional, or only partially functional? Apparently, according to this article, the pilot assumed the plane would do one thing when it did something different. According to John Cox, former air- line pilot and accident investigator, "The flight crew had an expectation that the auto throttle system was going to do certain things that it did not do. Although they were trained about it, it was not overly intuitive." Asiana argued the pilot and copilot reasonably believed the automatic throt- tle would keep the plane going fast enough to reach the runway - when in fact, the auto throttle was effectively shut off after the pilot idled it to correct an unexplained climb earlier in the landing. Can you see the disconnect here? While the autopilot was programmed to do one thing, the pilots assumed it was going to do something else. The key word here is “intuitive”. This comes from the word “intuition” which means: Direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independ- ent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension. Intuition is what the aver- age person would logically conclude about an issue or a process without any additional information like an instruction book to reference. You see a damaged car parked along the side of the road and logically conclude it was involved in an accident. You don’t have any information about how the car was damaged, but it is rea- sonable to assume given the informa- tion you do have. Applying this to electronic product development when I first started mak- ing water pump controls, I thought peo- ple would be impressed with all of the different things my product could do. WRONG! People were not impressed with all the bells and whistles because it was unfamiliar, complex, and confus- ing to them. However, people were im- pressed with simplicity and ease of use. They were comfortable with familiar words and phrases they saw on the display, and the control unit did what they would logically assume it would do. I spent hundreds of hours making sure there were no unnecessary or un- expected control functions or display wording which might confuse the user. I rewrote the computer codes to provide nearly 100 different models tai- lored specifically to the customers’ needs and wants. The other functions are con- tained in the control unit, but the cus- tomer doesn’t see them and doesn’t need to deal with them because they are accessed with a special passcode. Input sensors and output relays each have unique “keyed” connectors which cannot be hooked up backwards. All of these things keep the customer’s “intel- lectual investment” in the product to a minimum. It’s not that people are “dumb”... their skills are in other areas. Humans have only so much capacity for change, and the less change they have to deal with, the better. Britt Britt Storkson may be contacted via e-mail at admin@ worldwidedrillingresource.com 70 JUNE 2014 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Storkson cont’d from page 67.