![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alarms and attention
Jun. 18th, 2019 10:05 amI recently told this story on a small tech list and I thought I'd copy it here for posterity.
Once upon a very long time ago I worked at MCC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectronics_and_Computer_Technology_Corporation) and we researched large software systems, among them the Aegis missile defense system. Having done that, it was entirely unsurprisingly to me that it shot down an Iranian passenger airline. But that's a different story.
During our interviews with people it turned out that there is a significant problem with alarms in jet aircraft cockpits. There is so much going on and so many systems competing for attention that alarms are often missed. This problem is compounded for pilots trying a difficult task such as a carrier landing, and that problem is even worse because those pilots may be flying damaged aircraft (and thus have more alarms) as well as being post combat. Adrenaline is remarkably good at focusing your attention, which is great for combat, but it does so in part by suppressing other stimuli, such as noise. People who are pumped up on adrenaline tend not to hear things even in a cockpit. Alarms and warning buzzers are going off and tend to be hard to distinguish. Having a recorded voice speak the warning works best.
The biggest risk, it turns out, is pilots forgetting to put down their landing gear. On a land airfield this is a problem; on a carrier it's a catastrophe. A "gear-up touchdown" (it's not called a landing when you do that) is likely to make the carrier deck unusable, potentially stranding every other plane in the air because there's no place else to land. If the plane is damaged and cannot get its gear down the pilot will be ordered to ditch into the water and wait for rescue rather than risk damaging the carrier flight deck. Ditto planes on fire or shedding parts.
So the Navy did a great deal of research on how to get pilots' attention on the gear up warning. It turns out that if you have a girl child voice say, "Daddy, your gear is up!" that works 100% of the time(*).
However, it utterly freaks out the pilot and they may make other errors of judgement. It's still a carrier landing, after all, and there's a lot that needs attention. So the Navy went with the second-best option, which was a female voice using what's known as a "BBC English" accent saying the warning. It turns out that fighter pilots pay a lot of attention to English ladies' voices.
Stories like this are why I love doing ethnographic research...
(*) there were no women carrier combat pilots at the time
Once upon a very long time ago I worked at MCC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectronics_and_Computer_Technology_Corporation) and we researched large software systems, among them the Aegis missile defense system. Having done that, it was entirely unsurprisingly to me that it shot down an Iranian passenger airline. But that's a different story.
During our interviews with people it turned out that there is a significant problem with alarms in jet aircraft cockpits. There is so much going on and so many systems competing for attention that alarms are often missed. This problem is compounded for pilots trying a difficult task such as a carrier landing, and that problem is even worse because those pilots may be flying damaged aircraft (and thus have more alarms) as well as being post combat. Adrenaline is remarkably good at focusing your attention, which is great for combat, but it does so in part by suppressing other stimuli, such as noise. People who are pumped up on adrenaline tend not to hear things even in a cockpit. Alarms and warning buzzers are going off and tend to be hard to distinguish. Having a recorded voice speak the warning works best.
The biggest risk, it turns out, is pilots forgetting to put down their landing gear. On a land airfield this is a problem; on a carrier it's a catastrophe. A "gear-up touchdown" (it's not called a landing when you do that) is likely to make the carrier deck unusable, potentially stranding every other plane in the air because there's no place else to land. If the plane is damaged and cannot get its gear down the pilot will be ordered to ditch into the water and wait for rescue rather than risk damaging the carrier flight deck. Ditto planes on fire or shedding parts.
So the Navy did a great deal of research on how to get pilots' attention on the gear up warning. It turns out that if you have a girl child voice say, "Daddy, your gear is up!" that works 100% of the time(*).
However, it utterly freaks out the pilot and they may make other errors of judgement. It's still a carrier landing, after all, and there's a lot that needs attention. So the Navy went with the second-best option, which was a female voice using what's known as a "BBC English" accent saying the warning. It turns out that fighter pilots pay a lot of attention to English ladies' voices.
Stories like this are why I love doing ethnographic research...
(*) there were no women carrier combat pilots at the time
