Just had an opportunity to watch the documentary "If Only . . . " about Human Performance Factors in SCUBA Diving. It's a great watch for information on how things can go wrong. Watch here: vimeo.com/414325547

@cjd Going to suggest this for our next HF refresh.

We're required to do it once a year at work, but normally the materials are those produced by OSHA, which is very dry and applies mostly to the chemical industry.

@freemo @cjd Human Factors, the study and practice of how human performance, biases, and failures intersect with the systems we use to contribute to failures.

It's used often in tech, but not rigorously. For example, in python, it's recognised that it's hard to track the format and type of data as it moves through the dynamically typed language. A principle of aggressively checking types, or using mypy can help as a defence against this.

@freemo @cjd my fave HF example is the number of times pilots would land gear-up and trash planes.

It's typically the overlap of
1) being tired after a long sortie
2) the "5 miles from home" thing where you're near to home and your standards drop
3) aircraft having lots of inputs that are easily confused at a glance

Some practices that were developed against it:
1) Air traffickers will remind pilots with a gear call before landing, in case they forgot.
2) Gear levers now are wheel-shaped at the end - if you grab the lever and it feels like the end of a flat tear-drop, you've grabbed the flaps lever, shaped like a wing section. It's right next to the gear lever in a lot of aircraft, and also makes noise when activated. Now you can tell by touch and this mistake literally "doesn't feel right".

@kline

Makes sense. I thought it was some sort of SCUBA thing I couldnt remember.

@cjd

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