False Alarm

On 13 January 2018, residents of Hawaii received a frightening alert via their mobile phones of a ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii that, 38 minutes later, was retracted as a false alarm, the apparent result of human error:

THP CHP 130118SLUG 1318JPGED

That a human erred was perhaps not surprising once it was revealed that the user interface via which to send such alerts resembled the below, seemingly little more than an unordered list of links:

DTowcFJU0AAvtVo

The human was supposed to have clicked DRILL - PACOM (CDW) - STATE ONLY that morning but accidentally clicked PACOM (CDW) - STATE ONLY instead, thereby sending an actual alert.

State officials later clarified that the above was only a mockup and that the user interface (UI) actually resembled the below, describing this one as "more accurate," though seemingly little better:

Image uploaded from iOS 1

Answer the below in alarm.md, each in no more than two sentences.

Questions

  1. (2 points.) Critique the design of the second, "more accurate" UI, identifying some flaw.

  2. (1 point.) Do you feel the human or the UI is to blame for the false alarm? Why?

  3. (3 points.) Suppose you were asked to reimplement this UI using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in such a way as to reduce the risk of human error significantly. Propose which features of these languages you would leverage to implement your UI:

    1. HTML

    2. CSS

    3. JavaScript

  4. (1 point.) For what purpose (i.e., feature or function) might you use SQL for your UI’s server-side back end?

  5. (1 point.) Via what sequence of steps, however unlikely, could a human still err, triggering a false alarm accidentally, when using your proposed UI?

Debrief

  1. Which resources, if any, did you find helpful in answering this problem’s questions?

  2. About how long, in minutes, did you spend on this problem’s questions?