E289 - The Human Factors of the Titan Submersible

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Oh, it's good to be back. This is episode 289. We're recording this episode live on July 27th, 2023. This is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host, Nick Rome. Joined today by Mr. Barry

[00:00:15] Barry Kirby: Kirby. Hello. And it's good to be back. It feels like a long time since we've

[00:00:19] Nick Roome: been here. Barry, I missed you. I'm sorry. It's been so long.

We do have a great show for you all tonight. We're gonna be diving into the Titan, the. Submersible that imploded and all the human factors issues going on with that and how human factors played a role in its failure. Later on, we'll be answering some questions from our community. We'll we'll discuss how to handle feeling ignored and undervalued as a uxr on a struggling team, the current job market and vice for UK researchers looking to move to the U s A Barry and and tip, just kidding and tips for making your resume attractive to the space industry if you're a human factors engineer.

But first, let's jump into some programming updates and show notes here. If you were unaware we were off last week, but I did post the H F E S town hall in our feed, so if you haven't had a chance, go listen to that. Some really great information over there. A lot of great folks breaking down the latest from the Society.

Barry, what is the latest going on over at 1202?

[00:01:21] Barry Kirby: So at 1202, we've got the long awaited 'cause this has been a long time in the, not so much the making, but in the clearance of an interview with Trevor Dobbins, who is a human practice integration lead or human practice lead at R B S L which is a company in the UK that is producing land armored vehicles.

And so Trevor talks to us about his background and how he's do doing H F I or human factors integration on the latest land armored platforms, some of the challenges he's facing, but also some of the cool ways he's using other tools and techniques in order to achieve the approvals and the amount of rigor that we need to get into to be able to sign a lot of this sort of stuff off.

Been a long time in the waiting but well worth listen. So I thoroughly encourage you all to go and have a listen

[00:02:04] Nick Roome: to that. Yes, please go listen to that. And while you are. Downloading that you can listen to this next part of the show. We'll get into the next part of the show. So why don't we do it?

It is been two weeks and I already feel like I'm not even, alright. Anyway, this is the part of the show all about human factors news. Barry, what is the story this week?

[00:02:33] Barry Kirby: So the story this week is about the Titan Disaster, Stockton versus Scott, and a Tale of Human Factors in Failure. So on June the 20 June 22nd, this year just over a month ago, the Titan, a submersible operated by Ocean Gate Expeditions imploded whilst on its way to the Titanic wreck.

All five passengers on board were killed, including the c e O of the Ocean Gate Stockton Rush. The cause of the implosion is still under investigation but there have been reports that the sub may have suffered a structural failure. The article that we are referring to tonight compares the recent tragedy with the Titan sub submersible led by Rush with that at the Antarctic expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, which also ended in tragedy in 1911.

Comparing the two expeditions highlights the importance of human factors in predicting the probability of failure and improving safety and high risk expeditions. It emphasizes factors such as planning, preparation, decision-making, risk management, communication and leadership as key elements to consider.

The article also provides a code center for regression model that uses these factors to predict the probability of failure in future expeditions. However, it does our acknowledge the limitations of the model, such as not considering environmental factors and individual skills, and emphasizes that models should be used as a tool for planning and for assessing and mitigating risks.

The article concludes by identifying specific human factors that correlated with the failure of the expeditions, including overconfidence, poor decision making, lack of communication, and poor leadership. It emphasizes the need to be aware of these factors and it takes steps to mitigate them in order to prevent future tragedies.

Overall, this article highlights the importance of human factors in the field of human factors, engineering and underscores the role of practitioners in analyzing and addressing these factors to improve safety and high risk environments. Nick, you've had a read of the article. We've all been following the coverage over the past month or so and see what's going on.

What are your thoughts on the the findings of the article? So

[00:04:28] Nick Roome: this article I thought was interesting for a whole host of reasons, right? It makes comparisons against with the Titan Gate Titan Ocean Gate Titan to this other expedition that happened. So taking into account human factors and how various aspects of human factors went into this.

It also provides that regression model for as a resource. So I thought there was a lot here in the article. That's a useful piece for the community. I think, my guess is that people want to hear us talk about the sub and the human factors with the sub. So I think for the show, we'll focus on that piece.

For me, I've been thinking about how to tackle this episode for weeks, and truthfully, I'm still at a loss on how to even begin. This story has given me nightmares. And truly I wanna do the human factors piece of this whole story justice. It's obviously tragic folks lost their lives during this.

It's hard to talk about and there are still details being discovered about what happened. And so any information that we present tonight may be outdated in the future. And I think Barry has a larger disclaimer here when you're gonna go. But I think this does open up a larger conversation about risk safety regulations and human factors role in all of those things.

And in short, I don't know where this conversation is gonna go tonight. And I am really interested in finding out. So Barry, what are you thinking about this article?

[00:06:07] Barry Kirby: As you say, yeah, the first thing I want to really say is for us to all recognize, you'll have noticed normally we have a bit of laughing and joking going in through the story.

Gen that's not happening tonight because this is an ongoing investigation. Into what's gone on and our takes here. I get they're based on the public information that is available and has been in, has been available. Neither of us are experts in deep sea naval architecture and engineering. Though I have had a small amount of time working on submarines.

So from that perspective, I do find this particularly interesting. And we'll, let's, we will focus on the human factors aspects, but it's worth remembering that human factors aspects not only cover the human factors engineering side of things, but does involve culture, behavior risk appetite, and things like that.

So there is a broad amount of discussion to be had because of what's gone on. One thing I think I would highlight from the o right at the top is I found a lot of the courage of this story to be quite distasteful. In the media and actually disappointing in some respects. The, there's been a lot of talk, particularly in the social media just because of the money and the wealth aspects of the case of the accident.

And just because that these people were wealthy, then it meant that actually the, this wasn't an accident that, that needed to be seriously looked at and could be dismissed or mocked or whatever. Which I think is quite disappointing from the, the fact that people lost their lives here.

But there is also, and I said we cover the try and cover it all. There's a lot to be looked at into regards to the, at attitudes and behaviors of the entire Titan team here. The, or rather the Ocean Gate team, should I say? Not just the, But from the top down, there's a lot of evidence coming to light now that their attitude to safety left a lot to be desired.

Not only are things seemingly to have been just not overlooked, but just acknowledged and ignored. And not only ignore, but then bragging about the fact they're doing it as well. That in hindsight, when you look at it now is just horrific to see. It does ask questions. This whole, the whole thing is does ask questions around the role of exploration in the modern age.

Because we are doing lots of exploratory stuff. We are, we've got space rockets going out. We are doing all of that sort of stuff. And could they, could, these folks have done something more with autonomy that's available, remote operation that's available in order to do a lot of the testing and things like that.

So what does exploration mean? Also the role of private capital? We have met, or I've mentioned about the fact that a lot was being made of their wealth and when the, when they were doing this. But one of the things, we highlight, there's people die doing exploration or doing extreme things all the time.

How many people die on Everest every year when they're going into climate? Which clearly, that has its toll. But then this clearly captured a bit of our imagination. I disagree with the conclusions on leadership. I think yes, the. Where they were led wasn't brilliant, but actually there's a, there's an argument here that actually the leadership of both characters involved, because again, we're talking about this, but there's there's book where we compare Stockton and Scott both of them, both their expeditions ended in failure, but they, these two people with clearly led and inspired and got people to follow them despite almost so the arduous conditions that they were going through.

So there's an element around that. So I've waffled on about my immediate reaction. Nick, where do you think, where what aspect of this would you like to explore first?

[00:09:37] Nick Roome: Oh, I genuinely don't know. I think for me the most interesting aspect of this is the. Disregard for regulations and the expert opinions here by many in the submersible community.

And so I guess the larger question of what role do regulations play into something like this where you're right, people do die on Everest, but for me, I think this lands a little bit differently because unless you are taking a private charter to Everest and having a Sherpa take you up there and care for you, if you were to do that on your own, yes, of course you'd die because you don't have the experience, potentially you don't have the resources that you may or may not be aware of to go to the thing.

Now here, I'm gonna treat it more like a you purchase for an experience, and I'm gonna take it from the Consumer protection perspective because us as consumers, we should be protected. And in the case of this sub, the consumers were not protected. And I think this leaves a lot to be explored when it comes to these regulations because they exist for protection.

Alright. The c e o kept referring to this as an experimental sub. He was very clear about it being experimental, but I don't think, I think there was this Hype around being caught up in the fact that you're actually going down to Titanic. And I don't wanna say that safety precautions weren't taken because they did have some safety precautions.

There's a YouTuber out there who shared his experience about going into the sub and albeit it was just like a smaller shallow dive comparison in comparison. But it was presumably one of the last few before the sub imploded and there were safety measures being taken there. They were measuring weight before getting on.

They were, it's not like they were. It's not like they weren't being smart about it, but they weren't being particularly rigorous about it, I think is my sort of assessment of the situation. The, the weather situation actually scrubbed that that dive that I was just talking about with the YouTuber before they went down all the way.

And, a couple dives were scrubbed because of weather and so to me they, it's not like they weren't taking safety into consideration, but was it as rigorous as other industries? No. We're talking about a carbon fiber shell, a tube of carbon fiber for this thing and people make jokes about it being glued onto the cap.

And the idea is that the carbon fiber was cheaper and it was used for. Airline construction and they used it and repurposed it for a submersible, and that had never been tested before. And there are some, as we've all become experts, there are some really interesting differences in the way that carbon fiber is structured at an anatomical level versus titanium.

And because of those differences and the repeat exposure to pressure it doesn't look good. All that to say, I think the safety aspects were there. They were thinking about it. But again, because there weren't like these rigorous adherence to regulations and testing, extensive testing, there are some comments that people are pointing to.

And that are out there about the c e o making these statements about being flippant about safety and Yeah, those are there, but I wanna like almost do the devil's advocate piece, like they were thinking about it. Again my argument is with the rigor piece what are your thoughts on that safety regulation?

I

[00:13:49] Barry Kirby: think the regulation piece is interesting 'cause you could argue that they were they're breaking new ground, so what legislation actually applies to them. We can all go swimming, we can all go and do the, there is no true regulation underneath the sea. But then wait, so the same argument could almost be applied to, to, to SpaceX, right?

SpaceX is a private venture. It is. How many explosions, how many Falcons did they go through before they even dared to put a human on it? So they went through all of that and, but they still had to adhere to legislation because they were going through airspace. There were, there was all of that stuff and they were better for it.

So the argue, the flip side of that argument then is why is it that any sort of submersible is not there is clearly the clearly don't have to adhere to regulation because, This was not a pro, this was not a secret venture. It was tourism. And therefore the people who, you know, if there was gonna be legislation about it if it's anything like, if it would've been anything like the aviation industry, there'd been all over it, like a rash.

And there clearly weren't. So there is that element then it feels, you're right, they did acknowledge that safety was present and there was a number of scrub dives and all this sort of stuff. It is interesting though the point you raise around the, there was no tourists on the submersible.

They were all employees. They were all signed up as you look at the crew manifest. They were all explorers or whatever. They used a certain title. So they were specifically not tourists, they were staff and they all had a role to play. Even though they were tourists. But they all signed off the the waiver as well.

There was a lengthy waiver and this, that now people are going over that in retrospect, but they all signed waivers that said quite clearly, this is an experimental craft you could lose your life. So this does raise the question. It's a small print question, isn't it? That nobody reads a small print.

If I tell you that this is really risky, do we actually truly appreciate risk now in the way that we used to? Because if we turn around and say this is risky, do we Now I got the, at the feeling that, and I've seen this sort of reinforced elsewhere, that we turn around and say this is risky.

Sign, sign your life away, literally here and. We don't take that seriously anymore. We turn around and say, oh, they've gotta say that. It's our health and safety stuff, isn't it? And therefore, in this element of the expedition side of things where there really is risk, it's going to Everest, it's going on a space shuttle, it's going on a test flight, it's going on a whatever.

Do we believe that actually, even though we're signing away this, we're signing this waiver that actually there is no risk. It's just paperwork.

[00:16:29] Nick Roome: Yeah. And I do wanna jump in here because with talk about that waiver, and this is another one of the discussion points that are out there, so I figured I'd bring it up, is the difference between negligence and gross negligence.

And in the document, they, in the waiver, they say negligence, which means someone made a mistake somewhere. Gross negligence is like reckless or. Deliberate sort of ignoring of the rules. And so there's going to be presumably a legal battle about those terms and what exactly happened on the Titan.

And again, we're like still learning details and I don't wanna speculate either way, but I do wanna call out that difference because the waiver covers negligence. And so if there was something that was overlooked in the pre pre dive safety check, or if something didn't happen in a certain way then they'd be covered.

But if it was more sort of high level structural and I say structural semi ironically, but process that was intentionally ignoring regulation, intentionally ignoring safety protocol then that would be that gross negligence. And I. That is another piece of this whole safety discussion.

And the legality around some of those safety precautions, because I don't think most people realize, but like when you buy airplane tickets, you're agreeing to the same thing. There are fine terms in there that, that say the same thing essentially. Although airlines are under much more strict regulations, Than an experimental sub is.

So yeah, the likelihood is much lower, but it's still there.

[00:18:14] Barry Kirby: I, so on the, I guess the let's get into this bit about the you mentioned the carbon fiber, the use of carbon fiber and also just that physical design. 'cause there was elements of the design that apparently had been proven to, so the nose cones or the visualization panel was not rated for the depth they were going to.

It was rated for a depth of I'm gonna say a thousand feet. I think it was slightly more than that, but not the 4,000 feet that they were gonna, or they anticipated. So there, that is a want and disregard of. Of the capability of the stuff that they were doing also then the use of carbon fiber.

They had a safety expert working for them who turned around and said, whoa, hold on. This isn't safe. This is not what it's made for. I've got real problems with you using carbon fiber this way. So the ssim they dispensed with these services. And the way that they dealt with that is rather than looking at saying, going into the research and saying, oh, actually is carbon fiber the right the right material?

They then produced another safety system to listen to the cracking of the hull to determine whether, so an acoustic system to listen to the kraken in the hull to see if so it would alert if it could hear the cracking and therefore they could do something about it. However, as some other analysis has highlighted that cracking would happen milliseconds before Anything dangerous happened as we now find out?

It's an interesting, so I said I've got quite a few friends who are submariners and what was, firstly, what was really interesting was the whole attitude piece. Certainly within the time that the recovery was going on and the immediate future. Very few of them submariners were actually throwing any shade, any blame or anything at what was going on because they've all faced the common enemy, which is the sea.

And so that was firstly really poignant and there was lots of sharing of hope and and that type of thing amongst that community. But equally, there was also Africans, I've seen analysis come from them from their firsthand knowledge of being submariners and things and some of the stuff that they've highlighted around having, the way that Hulls have designed almost every country designs a submarine whole in the same sort of way of having an outro and n hole pressure hole and and open spaces.

Because that's the safest way of doing it. And some design, airplanes all look the same. They've all got wings and a and essential piece because that's the way that the, they've evolved. They've got nuances around them, but that's the way it's happened. And this, obviously this moved away from that.

In the materials they've used, but there's, I think the point that they were making is their materials have evolved for a reason. And so yeah I just, I kinda wanted to highlight that point. The, that, that whole community piece was really interesting to see. I, as I mentioned, that that the person who raised the issues was sacked.

And so that read and then that, and with, amongst some of the other things that we've said really digs into the culture of the organization, and this is where we can go back and talk about leadership as well, because whilst they were, he was clearly leading an expedition actually. He was in the submersible.

He clearly believed in it. He clearly was willing to do the whole, put his life on the line thing, literally because he believed in what he was doing. That was evident from, just basically the way that they've run it. But where do you, where was the responsibility within the rest of the organization?

So there must have been a board, there must have been other people within the business. If one person is raising a safety issue, where was everybody else saying, hold on a second. Why could nobody feel that? They could also either back up the safety issue or they just went along with the leadership?

It does make you wonder a lot about the culture whether it was a sort of a just culture, a safety driven culture or the flip side could be true. Is it just an acceptance that you can't have innovation without risk and therefore, We, you're not gonna go and do cool things without taking significant risks, because with significant, when you take significant risks and they're overcome, you get significant reward.

So where do you fit on, where do you fit on that innovation versus risk bubble? When we're talking about ex exploration, I don't know. I'm

[00:22:30] Nick Roome: a homebody. I don't like risk. So for me I'm gonna wanna do my research before I go into a place and just winging it rarely works for me.

In my personal life, in my professional life, in podcasting, just winging it rarely works. When it does, oh, it's nice because you haven't done all the prep work and you're still reaping the rewards, but, When it doesn't, then you have a show that's not fun to listen to for podcasting.

You have an event that you're gone, you've gone to and you have no idea what to do there because you haven't done the research ahead of time or you're going into a user event unprepared because you didn't prepare a list of questions. And so are you going to get the answers that you're looking for?

And so I'm drawing one of these from each thing that, is important to me, personal, professional, and podcasting. And so like you can see where that allure is there to cut corners to innovate. And I'm gonna say cut corners when it's really ignoring sort of the rigor. I, again, I'm gonna keep coming back to this piece because this is what I keep thinking about.

It's like if you had just stress tested the carbon fiber, I. In a lab environment then, and done this repeatedly under that same p s I, you would've seen that this is not something long term that you can do and to take people down in that sub knowing. Or I guess the flip side is not knowing what would happen under that many exposures to that pressure is irresponsible in my view.

I don't think that makes it any less innovative. And I struggle with this, and again, like this story is hard to talk about because. I do respect the fact that they're trying to innovate. I don't respect the way that they went about it. I think that is, for me, the piece that if you innovate test again, and then just knowing when enough testing is enough to actually start playing with human life.

I don't know. To me, human life is precious. And so like why even mess with it if the risk versus reward is not worth it in situations where you can use your, lose your life. But, if I go to a theme park without researching the rides first, then I'm still gonna have fun probably.

[00:25:00] Barry Kirby: It is interesting isn't it? Because actually with so I've worked with a lot of pilots and test pilots. And test pilots are I think a particular breed. They will go in, they're testing you, they will, they take up first flights, they do this sort of thing in aircraft that you wouldn't do.

However, none of them are risky. I don't think. So they, when I've chatted to them, they want to know everything about the aircraft, everything more than any other. So they want to know how it works. They want to know what the potential errors are. They want to know what, how it's going to work, et cetera, et cetera.

So that, again, there is that, but as long as they understand what the risks are, then they, some of them are quite happy to say, yeah, fine, as long as I know what it is, I'll go and do it anyway. Because they then appreciate what it is they're doing. I do think there is a lot of stuff out there that, take the almost any NASA astronaut or any astronaut who's going up that is a significant amount of risk.

We've seen some major disasters come outta NASAs and others because of that. And they've been when you dig into some of them, there's been some silly mistakes that have led to catastrophic failure. And that is, but whilst tr whilst a tragedy it was, it's still seen as an acceptable level of risk for what it is that we are doing to innovate and get out to the stars.

And yet we know more about space than we do know about our own notions just because of the depth of what it's that we're doing. So we could argue that there, the level of risk I think is to do something. Different and cool. I can see there are people out there who quite happily do that.

Because without high risk high reward, I don't think me and you are the world's biggest risk takers. No. But there are clearly, there are people out there. We know there are and you get some people who will take, Elon Musk is one of them. We've got James Dyson is another one in the engineering field.

He will he's. Done some significant things, the one time or another, be it financially or whatever they laid out, they laid on the line. I guess for me, the bit that sticks in the throat is not the risks that they weren't aware of. If they hadn't known about the carbon fiber thing and they were just trying something new and this was what the fifth dive or fifth major dive, they'd done lots of small dives as well.

And the Cabify was clearly holding up. It wasn't doing what necessarily everybody thought it should be doing in these conditions. So you could argue actually it, they were proving people wrong. And people said, oh, it could fail. It might fail, but there was no actual proof that it was failing that we know of at this time, that could change what gets it.

For me, it's a bit like these portals that I was talking about earlier is it's not only the fact that they knew some of these risks, that it was highlighted to them about what it was that were keen to brag about. The fact that they were going that they weren't just saying, oh, we'll accept the risks.

They were going, we don't believe that's a real risk. That's we risk takers. We can do the that's not risk taking. That's not sensible risk assessment that is just sticking two fingers up and saying, I know better because I feel it in my bones. So let's switch tack slightly. Can these expeditions have value if they're privately funded?

So the, as I mentioned in my preamble, there was a lot of discussion and debate and whatever that this disaster shouldn't be thought of as any others. 'cause there were older with rich individuals who were doing sea tourism. Does that make it does that mean we can't learn anything from it?

[00:28:22] Nick Roome: That's interesting. And it's a really interesting point too, because you start to think about risk and innovation and exploration, and this is that like perfect confluence of everything there, right? So you have you have this exploration, and if you think about exploration from. The perspective of what do we have left to explore?

It's the deep sea. It's space. Other planets, we know a lot of stuff about the planet. And we've mapped out almost every square inch of the planet. And we know almost everything there is to know about the surface, but the allure of what's below and what's above. Okay. That's what we have left.

And we can't just build a vessel to get there. And we did build vessels to cross vast, vast oceans. And we as a species have made strides with exploration in terms of, like I'm thinking about like Pacific Islanders, who I. Use the stars to navigate and they used boats to get from island to island.

Colonization of America is a completely different thing, so I'm not talking about that to be clear. But you think about exploration and that was exploration, but it was also colonization. I'm not gonna talk about that. But the exploration piece is more the curiosity about what's out there and and can we get to it? Okay. I understand that. I understand that. There are curiosities that I have and that I want to explore. Like, how can we use AI in podcast development? How can we use it safely in podcast development? How can we use it to where it's efficient and going to help us out? That type of thing.

So there's areas that are not geographical that I want to explore. There's the other piece of it, which is the risk. How much risk are we willing to take? We. I'll give everybody a letter. Everybody in on a secret here. Some of our social media posts are not done by a human. Those are done by automation.

If you can't tell, great, we're fooling you. If you can tell we're trying something out. And so what's the risk there? The risk is that somebody catches us on using AI and I'm fully disclosing it here. So is it really a risk if I'm okay with people knowing that that's a little different when you are putting other people's lives at risk other than your own.

If you wanna go in a, like submersible on your own, that's fine. If you're okay with losing your life in pursuit of the thing that you're exploring, fine. When you are putting other people at risk, when perhaps they don't know everything about it. And this is probably one of the hardest pieces to talk about with this story.

Especially 'cause one of the the kid who is 19 years old, okay, he didn't want to go on this thing. After he had done the research beforehand there, there are documented instances where he had told his father that he did not want to go on this, but his father pressured him into going because of Father's Day.

[00:31:26] Barry Kirby: That's been somewhat disputed. Has it been okay? Yeah. So I wouldn't necessarily stress on that too

[00:31:31] Nick Roome: much. Okay. That's like the human story piece of it, but Yeah.

[00:31:35] Barry Kirby: But the point you make there around how, again it's a whole at risk appetite thing is it's how do we know that? That people truly understand the risk, right?

How do we know that You, yes, you sign the disclaimer. Even when you go on a boat ride to go and see the seals on an island whatever. There, there is a, there, there's an element of disclaimer there because the boat could capsize and everybody could be lost at sea. You don't go onto that boat thinking it's going to capsize and you think you, you think, yeah, no, that's fine.

They've gotta say that. Just in case. What is the difference between that level of disclaimer and the appreciation of risk for this? Given that they paid a lot of money to be effectively submersible tourists. You don't go to Disneyland thinking that that the whole thing's gonna come crushing down on you.

You're there as a tourist, you're there to have a good time. It could happen. No, there, there isn't a risk. That could be an whatever, earthquakes, whatever, that it could happen. But you do not believe that's gonna happen. And I dare say that there's an element of this confusion there around the difference between a trained explorer type te the equivalent to the test pilot in this situation, who has a true appreciation of the risk and the knowledge to ask the right sort of questions, as opposed to, I'm paying some money.

Yes. I'll put B pretend I'm a member of staff at an ex, whatever it is. And get on board. I want you to bring in a social thought. Yeah, please do. Professor Bob Stone has commented on on one of the LinkedIn posts and he says, although we were nowhere near this deep. Near sdi. This does remind me of the time when I dived on board the British only Annex three-man submersible LR two back in 1982.

What should have been a 30 minute dive down to conduct a number of manipulation tasks on a special rig on the bottom of La Lenny turned out to be a 13 hour endurance exercise all in the name of human factors. Of course, we were conducting research into man versus remotely operated systems for the then Department of Energy.

Fortunately, lived to tell the tail again and went on to dive in other subs afterwards included the one man Mantis du Plus as featured on the James Bond film for RAs only. And they're all Navys LR five Rescue boat. The predecessor, the Royal Navy is NATO Submarine Rescue System. Great experiences, but a firsthand example of what could easily go wrong.

Again, that's, thankfully Bob lived to tell the tale, but again, that's I. Not massively dissimilar. You go down on a to conduct an experiment expecting to be out for half an hour. Th and you are still down there 13 hours later. That's gotta get the the blood pressure up a little bit.

[00:34:05] Nick Roome: Oh yeah. I can imagine

[00:34:08] Barry Kirby: it would be interesting with our discussion if we could have got Bob on to sort to talk us through what his appreciation of risk was at the time.

[00:34:16] Nick Roome: Yeah, it really would because like I'm through the eyes of somebody who's fairly risk averse. And to get back to your original question of do these things have value if they're privately funded and the whole risk aversion piece to me they have value because other people are risking their lives for knowledge.

In this case, I don't know if that risk was worth the reward for all of us. I think it, it was tourism, we know. Almost everything there is to know about the Titanic at this point. We've done plenty of maps of the sinking. We have an appreciation for how it sunk to go to that location there. There's not really a need to other than for vanity.

And so if this was done in pursuit of something more meaningful, and I hate to say that it wasn't meaningful, that they lost their lives for, I think we could be having a very different tune, right? If, oh, this Ocean Gate sub went down, it was finding all these new creatures at the bottom of the ocean with this very experimental instrumentation and they were doing it very cheaply and, ignoring safety.

But look at all this knowledge they brought back. That to me would be a much more compelling argument for. The whole cutting corners to be experimental versus losing lives in pursuit of seeing a sunken ship up close and personal. To me it's a, there's a little bit of a difference there.

So is there value if they're privately funded? Yes. What do we learn from it though? Like in, in this case, we learned that carbon fiber is not an acceptable form of outer hull for a submersible. Or at least not for that depth. And so that's what we've learned from this. Do we think anyone's going to repeat this in the future?

Probably not. I don't think so.

[00:36:18] Barry Kirby: Not after this, that whole piece around. Yes. I think we've all been captured by the Titanic, the, to be fair, to ocean Gate. They're on their website and their remit, they do state that their research aims are to be pushing the boundaries of, I know, I can't remember exactly how to phrase it, but it's for deep sea exploration.

The Titanic is, was identified as a focus but not their only remit. Their remit. It was much broader than that. The Ty, the Titanic pieces was done because everybody's heard of the Titanic, and it could work as a, as an area of focus for them and an area of interest. So I think to be fair to the, or at least to.

Fully open, about the the elements of it. I think it's worth stating that. However I'd agree it's the the way that they've engaged with. It. I think we've touched on bits of the, we haven't touched anything around the actual human factors engineering piece of the, how they were, how they got sealed inside the comfort with inside it, the fact that a toilet was a bucket at the end of it, and that's all there was a size to do.

We haven't mentioned the controller that caused so much controversy. Join us in the post show for that. Yeah, that, so the whole the use of a gaming controller, which actually a lot of experts have said that's, there's a load of shade being thrown there, but actually have nothing to do with the actual outcome's.

Fine, that's fine. And it's been the same principles they used elsewhere. We, the fact that there was no signal emergency signaling gear, there was no way of, even if they got located before the catastrophic event happened, there'd still be no way to get them up because there was no, there's no real rescue gear that was in range.

Within the timeframe to be able to go to that sort of depth and do it 'cause of the depth that they were at. And so that no real safety, there was no way for them to get out of, they could have been floating on the surface and nobody would've known because they had no tracking gear, they had no beacons.

So all their elements of safety information as well we've barely touched upon. But again, we're all little building blocks in the the disregard of risk and the potential outcomes of the edge cases of what might happen. And unfortunately what has happened.

[00:38:23] Nick Roome: Yeah, you come for the human factors.

You stay for the philosophical debate. Any last thoughts on the Titan

[00:38:30] Barry Kirby: Submersible? I think for me it's as we've said, there is still an ongoing investigation and it'll be interesting to see how and what lessons are learned out of that. Or what lessons are identified and how we take them on.

I think there is still a lot of work from human factors piece here that I think what we've done now is almost take a is the hot take of what we know now. It'd be interesting in, say, six months time to come and revisit this to see if there is and do a really good review on the different elements that we know once the main co, once the official investigations are concluded.

But I think for me, the, that whole. Di not the appreciation of risk, but disregard of risk is, and that cultural aspect for me right now is that hot take that we should all be learning from. What about you, Nick?

[00:39:14] Nick Roome: Yeah, I think that's right. I don't think we're done talking about this as much as we may be tired about it.

There's a lot of lessons to be learned here and truly, once there is a forensic breakdown of everything that happened from from start to finish. Then I think we'll have a much more concrete story to point to and say, ah, human factors problem right here. Human factors problem right there, right now it's all spec, it's all based on speculation and rumor.

And so we don't typically like to do these stories, but figured that there was enough information out there that we could at least have the safety chat. And so again, hopefully we did this justice again, like this happened just a month ago at the time of this recording. So there's still a lot that we can learn, imagine where we're gonna be at a year's time from now.

That's the story. If you like the story we wanna thank our patrons and all of you for selecting this topic. And thank you to our friends over at Medium for our news story this week. If you wanna follow along, we do post links to all the original articles on our weekly roundups in our blog. You can also join us in our discord for much more discussion on these stories and much more.

We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be back to see what's going on in the Human Factors community right after this. Are you tired of boring lectures and textbooks on human factors and ux? Grab your headphones and get ready for a wild ride with the Human Factors Minute Podcast. Each minute is like a mini crash course, packed with valuable insights and information on various organizations, conferences, usability methods, theories, models, certifications, tools, and much more.

We'll take you on a journey through the fascinating world of human factors, from the ancient history to the latest trends and developments. Listen in as we explore the field and discover new ways to enhance the user experience. From the Think Aloud protocol to the critical incident technique. Focus groups iterative design will make sure that you're the smartest person in the room.

Tune in on the 10th, the 20th, and the last day of every month for a new and interesting tidbit related to human factors. Don't miss out on the Human Factors Minute Podcast. Your ultimate source for all things human factors. Human Factors Cast brings you the best in human factors. News interviews, conference coverage, and overall fun conversations into each and every episode we produce.

But we can't do it without you. The Human Factors Cast Network is 100% listener supported. All the funds that go into running the show come from our listeners. Our patrons are our priority and we wanna ensure we're giving back to you for supporting us. Pledges start at just $1 per month and include rewards, like access to our monthly q and as with the hosts.

Personalized professional reviews and access to the full library of Human Factors Minute. A weekly podcast where the host breakdown, unique, obscure, and interesting human factors topics in just one minute. Patreon rewards are always evolving, so stop by patreon.com/human factors cast to see what support level may be right for you.

Thank you, and remember, it depends.

Yes, huge thank you as always. To our Patreons, we especially wanna thank our human factors cast all access, PA and v i p patrons, Michelle Tripp and Neil Ganey. We truly appreciate your support and truly couldn't do this without that support. So I guess, we usually mention something here and I usually do a dumb commercial read.

I'm gonna forego that today since our conversation was a little bit more serious. And I'm gonna try to make this more of a transition from that serious chat to our normal lively selves in the, it came from section. So to that end we have a show sponsor tier if you want to help support the show even more by becoming a show sponsor and get your stuff out there to human factors practitioners.

Let us know with it's on our Patreon. Go do that. End with a memorable one-liner or joke. Because when it comes to reaching professionals like you, we're not just a podcast. We're a showstopping extravaganza of a awesomeness. All right, that's a bad one-liner. So we're gonna go ahead and get into a Came from

it came from.

How is that for Changing the mood? Alright, we're switching gears quite literally and tonally to it came from. This is the part of the show where we search all over the internet to bring you topics that community is talking about. You find any of these answers useful or helpful? Give us a, like, wherever you're watching or listening to help other people find this content.

This first one here is from Yoy Curry on the user experience subreddit. I always get tripped up with these names. Do you get along with your product owner or product manager? They write, how do I handle the situation where I feel ignored and undervalued as a uxr on a team that is struggling to deliver The pattern seems to be that the product owners prioritize developers over UXers and our input is overlooked.

What should I do in this situation? Barry, what do you think?

[00:44:24] Barry Kirby: So initially when I read this, I made the assumption that we are talking about an agile approach, a scrum based approach. 'cause we talking about product owner. My initial gut feel is that you need to go and give the scrum master a kick because that is exactly their job.

Is to make sure everybody's got equal equal engagement and to get the 'cause. That's their job is to get the value outta the team. However, given that you talk about a project manager as well, it might not be agile, it might be straight up waterfall. So the same matters to the project manager.

It's up to the either project manager or the technical lead, depending on how it's how the project is situated. You must have somebody at the top of your little your development group. It is their job to make sure that that they get in the best outta the team. So give them a kick.

But equally, Shout up. It's part of our role as human factors, UX people. We know that we often get overlooked. And so where if we just shrinking violence in the corner, then we're definitely not gonna get listened to. Part of your role as well is to also be able to shout, is to shout up and make sure that make that people know you are there.

There's a difference between being belligerent and annoying. But actually some people just might not know you've got anything to say if you are waiting to be invited into the conversation. So depending on what's going on, the senior leadership within your organization should be helping to discover this.

But equally, don't be shrinking Violet.

[00:45:42] Nick Roome: Nick, what do you think? Yeah, I think that's right. Bia, Karen, talk to the manager. And then also this whole there, there's, lemme just give some like pointers here. There's some key phrases that I find tend to break through a little bit more with product owners or product managers when you say we need to reduce the risk of building the wrong thing.

Then that is starting to get to them because they're understanding it in terms of the product and not in terms of the user. And they're product focused a lot of times. Some are user focused, but a lot of them are product focused. And so if you take a step back, think about it from the product perspective, what is your role as human factors as ux going to do for the product?

And really when you break it down, it is reducing the risk of building the wrong thing. And so when you say that and you say things like how much return on investment that you are getting from upfront research or from incorporating feedback that is derived from research, then you are much better positioned to start having those conversations.

And once they get it, it's likely that they won't un gett it, if that makes sense. At least from my experience. Alright, let's get into this next one here. This one I thought was interesting, Barry, because we both have a perspective on this. So this one is by Apprehensive ICE 9 6 3 on the UX research subreddit, UK researcher.

Thinking about moving to u S A job market, you the let's see here. Do you have any insights on the US job market and advice for applying for roles as a UK-based researcher moving to the U s a Barry, what are your thoughts there?

[00:47:23] Barry Kirby: Don't go. But I'd be keen to know how this works though. Just for interest's sake.

I've gotta be honest, I've got no idea. I've got no insights into the US job market. Particularly I do think it's one of these things that actually if you can go and get experience from other places, it's like going, it's like dipping toe into different industries. I think going, I think there is a lot of value where if you can get yourself into an organization in the US where there is a lot more people around around you, so you can learn more and you can also share your experiences.

It's, I should imagine it'd be a fascinating adventure. Whether the job market is good for you. I have no idea. Nick. I'll give that straight over to you.

[00:48:02] Nick Roome: Look there's a lot of opportunities and from what I understand, there's probably more opportunities here for that role than there would be over in the uk.

And so for that aspect of it, you can start looking and if. It just so happens to align with your interests, then perhaps it's a good choice. But you have to remember that there's some distinct differences between the US and the uk. We get paid so much more because we don't have things like free healthcare.

And so that's a

[00:48:29] Barry Kirby: And dental and

[00:48:31] Nick Roome: Yeah, exactly. We gotta pay for all that out of pocket. And or with insurance and it's just a different game. And cost of living is different too. So take all that into consideration. I would say that if you are seriously considering moving to the US it is much more than just a job market thing.

You're going to want to look at, like the social Components of it, because you won't just move to the US and the uk. A lot of places are walkable and here not a lot of places are walkable. So you'll need a car. You'll need a place to live. You'll, you, so there's all these other things that I just do your research.

If you are a researcher, you know how to do that. There's a lot of cultural differences that you might not immediately think about when you're just like, oh, I want to go and try the job market in another country. I know that's, that can be dismissive of saying that you haven't thought about these things.

But there are a lot of them from those who I have known to go to a different country to do something else. There's a lot more than they thought there was. So maybe talk to somebody who's done it. That'd be my advice. Okay, let's get into this last one here. This one's on the human factors subreddit.

We always like these by dazzling fund. 71, 72 space Industry advice. As a human factors engineer at a space defense company, I wanna transition to the space industry and work on crude space systems. I need advice on improving my resume to make it attractive to the space industry. Also, if anyone has experience with fully remote human factors work in aerospace, I would appreciate your insights.

Thank you. Alright, Barry, what do you think? How do you gear your resume, your experience? How do you tailor it to space? And what about working remotely in that sector?

[00:50:19] Barry Kirby: So I work in space at the moment and I work remotely in. Generally it's fine. I don't work on crude, I work on in crude. And I think that's the first thing I would highlight is crude space is very specialist.

There are a handful of places I think in the world that are truly looking at crude crude systems. You've got your nasa, you've got your SpaceX, but you've got around the world as well, d different ones. Most people at the moment are putting up payloads into space via satellite, Or you put up satellites into space and that still has a lot of human factors, attitude, a lot of human factors interaction though, actually it is still very much a growing a new field that that we consider how human factors integrates into the development of all these things, how they develop into the culture, the behavior, the processes as well as the the physical building and tra transition of payloads to go to launch.

And then there's the, there's the commander control of it. So we have earth-based control stations and that type of thing. So there's a lot of stuff that we do human practice practitioners that does. Work in the unmanned space domain, the space domain, the maned space domain itself is all the people I've met are all hyper specialists.

You've got a few generalists, but actually there's a quite, there's a lot of very highly specialized people within there's very narrow fields of knowledge and some of that is really good. And fascinating and brilliant. So getting yourself up on some of that stuff.

So I would say good if you can, a decent knowledge of aerospace helps a different domains where safety critical is key. So you could be oil and gas, you could be medical to a certain extent. Maritime sub submarines we've already mentioned is analogous stuff that you could get experience on.

And there's loads of different types of craft that go up and that do very different things as well. I would suggest if you want to get into space, don't necessarily focus on the cruise, on the crude side unless you've got a real opportunity or a real reason to jump straight in that think about space at its widest sense.

And I guess a real tip at the moment that I only picked up a couple days ago really is data interpretation. There's so much data coming down from space-based systems now. What do we actually do with it? How do we engage with it and how do we visualize that sort of stuff is also some of the big challenges that we've got right now.

Nick, what do you think?

[00:52:42] Nick Roome: I put this question because I was genuinely curious and your response, and it didn't disappoint. My, because the response that I was gonna give is match your language to what they're doing and try to put it. To perspective that you are like in a safety critical industry in that crude space.

And anything that you can pull from your current work in space or defense. If you work in defense, there's a lot of safety critical things there too. So if you can pull that aspect of it, do and try to use the same language, the same type of problems that they're facing in in crude space missions.

The other piece that I would add to this is that while it's not expanding as a field it's not at a fast rate, it is expanding. There are more and more companies that are getting into crude space flight. You have SpaceX Virgin Galactic blue Origin, nasa, right?

So there's all these various organizations that have crude space, and so there might be more opportunities in the future. I don't know, there's that piece of it too. Okay. That puts us at one more thing. That's where we talk about One more thing, Barry. What are we talking about?

[00:53:49] Barry Kirby: I was gonna talk about me moving offices.

But as that, we haven't completed that. We've only got halfway. Now, I'm a very angry and bit of person about this at the moment. But no we've just left our offices that we've been in for the past three years, and that was quite a, an emotional thing. But the thing I wanted to highlight, which I haven't got into, but I really wanna get into it, In the next sort couple weeks is the UFO hearings.

You guys have been out there have having in is it in the Senate or as part of a thing in the house and seeing some of the ev I've seen snippets and I've seen hot takes of people I trust comment commentators where you've got some people saying, from factual evidence, right?

We've we've got evidence from here that I was listening to direct evidence that they've found a non-human biological remains in these things, and that was all cool. That's really interesting and more to dive into. But then you've got other EV people delivering evidence that says I believe that my mate told me that he saw this.

So that doesn't really meet the threshold of research and evidence gathering, does it? My, my mate, when I was drinking moonshine salt anyway really in, but I love the fact that we, that you're engaging in this, and I want, I can't wait to actually have some time to go and dive into some of the testimony because I think it's interesting.

Nick what about you? What's your One more thing?

[00:55:06] Nick Roome: So I went into detail about this in the pre-show, but I'm gonna do a little video visual here. So for those of you who are listening, I'm holding up a contraption of multiple black devices that have a purpose. And this is my mobile usability lab.

I've spent a lot of time and research into making the perfect compact, very usable, very Easily set up piece of kit for anyone to go out and take into a usability setting where you can do recordings. Let me be clear. If you're doing defense, this won't work. But if you are doing like UX or human factors in a situation where you want something compact, literally fits in a container about the size of my my two hands fits in your backpack, lightweight.

If you're interested in a guide on how to make this for under $750, I will put one out there. But I just, I'm so excited about this. I've shown it off at every chance I get because as a media guy, audio and video are very important to me. Especially when getting data. And so like even down to the choice of microphone to be able to cancel out background noise in a like a busy warehouse or something.

And just while I'm on the topic, you can tell that I'm really excited about this. Each one of these lab mics that is on this kit record in a different channel. So one is left, one is right. So that way if you set it up right yeah, you can hear two different channels. So I was going on a tour of a warehouse and there were two different side conversations happening, but I chopped up the audio and isolated each channel and I could hear each conversation happening on either channel because there's one left and one right.

So I'm so excited about it. Anyway, if you wanna talk more about that usability kit or anything else, find me on our discord. That's it for today, everyone, if you like this episode and enjoy some of the discussions about being maybe trapped in the. Tube. I'll encourage you all to go listen to episode two 50 with what's the deal with double Decker airline seats.

Comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the story this week. Did we handle it with care? I don't know. Let us know, please. For more in-depth discussion, you can always join us on our Discord community. Visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news.

If you like what you hear, you wanna support the show, there's a couple things you can do. One, you can stop what you're doing right now, leave us a five star review. We would love you forever if you did that. Two, we would love you even more if you told your friends about us. That is how we grow. And three, if you have the financial means to do so and can support the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.

We'll do whatever you want. And as always, links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode. I wanna thank Mr. Barry Kirby for being on the show today. Where can our listeners find you if they wanna talk about this very serious topic that I'm not gonna make a joke

[00:57:41] Barry Kirby: about?

If you wanna come and chat to me about anything at all human factors based, then find me Oliver over social media at Baco K. And if you wanna come and listen to some more in-depth interviews with superstars in the human factors domain, then come and find me on 1202 Human Factors Podcast at 1202 podcast.com.

As

[00:57:59] Nick Roome: for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick Rome. Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors Cast. Until next time it.