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From: (no name) (no email)
Date: Mon Aug 04 2003 - 09:41:08 EDT
In a message dated 8/4/03 12:03:20 AM,
Julian writes:
<< I agree. I'm often amazed how poor the general ergonomics of many helms
tend
to
be. This seems to be a whole area of boat design where many builders and
designers
just refuse to attempt to innovate, or even do things that just seem to be
basic common
sense. It seems to me that the whole area of helm design could benefit from a
lot more
fresh thinking, especially for single handers.
>>
This is all the more surprising since the fundamentals of good ergonomic
panel design and instrument design have been known for at least half a century.
Numerous Mil Specs delineate the layout and design of instruments in vehicles
ranging from trucks, through aircraft, to nuclear submarines. Boat manufacturers
who supply to the military must conform to these specs so ignorance is no
excuse.
But the civilian market marches to a different drummer. Years ago I visited a
colleague who was in charge of automobile instrument panel design at General
Motors. He showed me an advance version of the upcoming instrument design for
one of the GM cars. It was particularly bad, strip speedometers, cramped
guages, hard to read numbers, and glittering chrome. On a previous job my friend
had quite successfully supervised the cockpit design of USAF fighters and had,
in fact written one of the Mil Specs I mentioned earlier.
When I asked him why this panel was so bad when surely he knew better, he
replied "If we do it right this year, what are we going to do for next year?"
Larry Z
P.S. If any boat builder is reading this, I would be happy to send the titles
of a 5 foot shelf of books, covering equipment design, layout and
maintenance. It wouldn't hurt.
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