The Flashlight Gun Is Peak WTF America

An officer “accidentally” fired his weapon during an NYPD raid on a student-occupied building at Columbia University on Tuesday. Apparently, he mistook his gun for a flashlight. You may be wondering: how could this happen? Well, like this. From a 2014 article in the Denver Post:

Ronny Flanagan took pride in his record as a police officer in Plano, Texas. He had an incident-free career. He took safety training regularly. He was known at the range as a very good shot.

Yet he killed a man when he was simply trying to press a flashlight switch mounted beneath the trigger on his pistol.

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

“I don’t want anyone to ever sit in a chair I’m in right now,” he said. “Think about the officers that aren’t as well trained, officers that don’t take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will.”

Jeeeeesus Christ this is the most American shit ever. First of all: guns, guns, guns!! We love ‘em! Don’t forget the complete militarization of the police (they’ve got tanks!), which happens in tinpot countries where leaders fear the citizenry. Those gun flashlights were initially developed for the Navy SEALs and now city cops wield them around students.

And then. And then! There’s the completely genius idea of PUTTING A SECOND TRIGGER ON A GUN — I wish I had letters more uppercase than uppercase for this next part — RIGHT BELOW THE FIRST TRIGGER!!!!!!! ¹
You know, the one that propels a projectile out of the weapon at deadly speeds!?

You’re familiar with those doors where the handle makes it seem like a pull but you actually have to push it? They’re called Norman doors, the canonical example of bad design. These flashlight guns are like Norman doors that kill people. W T Actual Fuck. (via @ygalanter.bsky.social)

1. I know I’m gonna get email about this so I’ll stop you right there Johnny Gmail: I am sure “not all guns” 🥴 with flashlights are designed like this. I am positive that putting yet another switch on a firearm that’s designed to be used when the gun is pointed at something or someone is a Bad Idea. And anyway, this whole thing about being an “accident” is BS anyway…there is nothing accidental about where that officer was with the gear that he had, doing what he was doing. It is all perfectly predictable that guns are fired by militarized police in Gun Land USA.↩

• crime
• design
• Don Norman
• guns
• policing
• politics
• USA

Bad Doors Are Everywhere

If you’ve ever pulled a door that you should have pushed, you’re not alone. Vox and 99% Invisible collaborated on this video about bad door design. I read Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things just as I was starting my design career and it probably had more influence than anything in how I approached designing for the web. (via @ophelea23)

• design
• Don Norman
• video

Norman on Tufte

Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things, has mixed feelings about Edward Tufte:

Tufte is often wrong about what constitutes good communication. Indeed, I am surprised he likes the Napoleon map so much because it has, in his terms, superfluous chart chunk - those drawings of soldiers. This is indeed an excellent graphic, but much of his work does not have this character.

Tufte is not the only statistician who has addressed the problems of representing graphical material. In my opinion, Bertin is the best.

Tufte preaches. I entered into a discussion with him about this once and tried to present some experimental data that one of my students had collected. he refused even to look at it. That is, it isn’t that he looked at the data and disagreed with the interpretation or even the collection— that would be permissible. No, he refused even to look.

• design
• Don Norman
• Edward Tufte