“For the first several seconds, there would have been little to suggest that anything was wrong.”

(It’s Halloween Week on Unsung, where we’re sharing scary, spooky, and creepy stories – and in posts like this one, sometimes not particularly enjoyable ones.) In October 2004, a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft crashed on take-off in Halifax, Canada, claiming the lives of the crew of seven. A YouTube channel Mentour Pilot walks us through the complex set of events that led to the crash: The story is presented more thoughtfully than the thumbnail would make you believe, and went into places I did not expect these kinds of videos to go: corporate culture, regional geopolitics, software onboarding. Also, in the end, it would be extremely reductive, but also not fully inaccurate to say: the tragedy wouldn’t have happened if the UI of one piece of software didn’t try to help the user. What resonated most with me was the argument that wasn’t actually stated: that we altogether treat software, and UI design, not seriously and rigorously enough. Boeing asked its pilots to use consumer-quality UI…