Blinking coloured squares

[tafkats]

Still not as weird as the TNG-era practice of having everything controlled by buttons with random numbers on them...

 

[C.E. Evans]

Those numbers may seem weird to us because we don't know what they represent, but they likely make complete sense to the people trained to operate or service those controls.

 

[BillJ]

Those numbers may seem weird to us because we don't know what they represent, but they likely make complete sense to the people trained to operate or service those controls.

Just like those operating the blinking light terminals.

 

[C.E. Evans]

 

[Bisz]

We do, we have stuff with blinking lights, we can imagine blinking lights, and we can see how much more efficient text is for relaying information.

That is simply not true.

None of my Windows laptop at work, my MacBook Pro at home, my iPad or my iPhone have blocks of text, they have... icons. All of the software running on those machines is based on icons, not text; my browser has a little arrow pointing backwards and not the word "Back", Word has a little disk icon and not the word "Save".

If you know what you are doing, you don't want to read test on an interface, its slow, cumbersome and not pleasant to look at.

 

[Bisz]

Those numbers may seem weird to us because we don't know what they represent, but they likely make complete sense to the people trained to operate or service those controls.

I'm an engineer at a car company, I work on making the equipment that welds the car together, complicated robot cells and the like. We have a technical group that does the actual robot teaching and logic programming.

I don't know this stuff because I don't have to, our techs do, but let me tell you, they have a language all of their own. All of our equipment is "standard", program one on each robot does exactly the same thing, L1 and K1 do exactly the same thing, Input 00 through 99, Output 00 through 99, achieve the same result. Same goes for all of the station control panels, each rung of logic is done according to standard, each touch & display screen is per standard, all the physical buttons and lights are per standard. If the green light on the cell is flashing you can enter the cell and load parts to it, if its solid all of the parts have been set correctly. The buttons are labeled but no one needs to read the labels to auto run the line, its always the same and everyone knows it; you hold the first button till it turns solid green, then you press the second one till it turns solid green, then you press the third one and the line goes into auto mode indicated by the first green light staying on and a new orange light coming on.

I could go on and on, but the point is, 95% of the stuff we do is based on coloured lights and buttons and no one needs to or wants to read the labels.

The only time we read the text is if we are really humped and are digging through the actual logic diagrams, then we read the latch/coil/contact/etc. labels.

 

[Tribble puncher]

I'd venture that an intelligent 18th century individual would grasp the concept of gauges on a car dashboard almost immediately once they had been explained - when the arrow is here the fuel tank is full, when it's here the fuel tank is empty and so on.

People in the 18th century were no less intelligent as such, just less-educated and knowledgeable.

Yes, and likewise, to show someone a particular symbol and tell them “this will appear when a torpedo is coming in” will be simple enough to learn too, or better still a line of text that says “incoming torpedo” it’s unambiguous and is much less likely to make something think it could mean something else. But “this will flash this colour three times to tell you this, or four times in a different colour will mean this, but when it flashes this colour four times and THIS bulb flashes too…” with different combinations for every possible thing that a starships sensors and computers might be trying to tell you would just be overwhelming for anyone. Sure, you can learn it, but surely it’s much simpler to display a simple symbol, (like “E” in a fuel gauge) or a line of text?[/FONT][/SIZE]

Or maybe Blinky lights just look more spacey and beeboopy.

 

[T'Girl]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmSSIBjgjqE[/yt]

 

[Jonas Grumby]

Seems to me that, to someone well-trained on what the blinking colored squares mean, actual text would be no more understandable. In fact, text might not be as efficient to "read."

Text might make more sense for devices meant to be understood by anybody--trained (or authorized) or not--but I'm not sure a Starfleet vessel's control systems are intended to be accessible to just anyone.

 

[Mytran]

Who's to say the blinking squares didn't have some text on them, it was just impossible to read on our TV screens?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Who's to say the blinking squares didn't have some text on them, it was just impossible to read on our TV screens?

I thought some of them did.