This is A Drill

I'm not a mind reader.

I can speak from experience, though.

A bit of background first: I'm a technical writer at a nuclear cleanup facility. I've been there for more than eleven years. For more than half of that time, I've been a member of the company emergency response organization -- the group responsible for responding to emergency situations.

So when last week's missile alert happened in Hawaii, I was interested in the news, particularly as I'm the guy on our ERO who works with the emergency notifications.

To clarify: I'm not the ultimate button-pusher, though my position on the ERO is part of that process. When I start that process, there are two other people in the room who check what I do for accuracy, and a third in a different location who reads my message back to me for the sake of clarity and sanity before that person sends it out to the public. So there are checks and balances that guard against mistakes -- thank heaven.

(Here is where I insert the obligatory "I'm speaking for myself, not for Fluor Idaho LLC, the company I work for. Anyone wanting official information on emergency response had better contact them and not rely on me.)

When we conduct our drills, we make sure any communication that could be overheard by an outside party is labeled as a drill. That goes for notes, radio calls, phone calls, etc. So when we drill, we hear the phrase "this is a drill" punctuating everything -- even verbal communication inside the room where we're drilling.

Our electronic notifications, too, have "drill" weaved into them.

If media reports are accurate, it appears the notification part of Hawaii's system needs a little work. (Again, I have no firsthand experience with Hawaii's system. Also, I'm not exactly sure how much of their system they've revealed to the media, nor if their process has been reported fully or accurately. I can only go by what's been reported.)

This Washington Post article is illuminating, as is their photo of the notification system being used.

This is kind of a mess. In fact, it's a real mess.

First of all, I like the "High Surf Warning North Shores" warning. That's clear. The landslide one is OK. After that, however, they get messier. And what makes them messy in part is the jargon And those dealing with the missile alert, well, they're the worst. Nothing in them really says "Missile Alert!" -- it's just tribal knowledge to know that "PACOM" is Pacific Command. Now, that probably makes sense to the military types. But these folks aren't in the military. This is a confusing mess.

However . . .

It's not fair to completely blame the user interface here (as Code Academy wants to in the handy little email they sent to me, touting their $199 UI course.

Remember what I said earlier about drills?

No matter the UI -- whoever was pushing buttons or using the UI interface should have been focusing on drill. DRILL.

How many of the items on this confusing, terribly-designed UI say drill?

One.

Let me say that again: One.

The UI is partly to blame. And though I've already confessed I can't read minds, it's clear to me that at some point the drill discipline in this instance was lacking.

Nevermind there should also be drill options for tsunamis -- that seems important -- and for any other contingency. As the UI was designed, in a drill situation for a PACOM event, there was only one logical option to choose. A second or two of hesitation, of visual-to-situation recalibration, could have prevented this mess before it started.