Comments on: The GPS told me to do it (PerryGeo) http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=2672 Blogging at KelsoCartography.com Sat, 11 Aug 2012 01:39:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Steven Hoober http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=2672&cpage=1#comment-19359 Steven Hoober Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:55:10 +0000 http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=2672#comment-19359 I think this is not “caveats in the meta-data” but something we need to work out in UI presentation. machine-era outputs are generally pretty good at expressing limits-of-precision. Digital-era outputs seem designed to kill people.

One of my favorite examples is the temp readout during the TMI-2 accident. The digital readout says 280°. Hot, but not dangerous yet. But that’s the readout, which someone decided could work like a dial and just stop at off-scale-high. Without the dial telling you this, no one knew that it was not 280° but “off scale high” and therefore unknown-bad. Just make the digital readout like the mechanical dial and everyone is much more informed.

I ranted about it a tad more at the blog I never update anymore here: http://shoobe01.blogspot.com/2007/06/off-scale-high.html

There are, similarly, good ways to express position on a moving map display (though often ignored) but even then position is always numerically expressed to the meter or better. Which is wrong.

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