Back in 1989, engineer Reginald Neale wrote Bob Pease a letter complimenting him on his troubleshooting book. He agreed with Pease’s observation that modern test equipment has complicated menu structures. Neale then recommended Pease read the book "The Psychology of Everyday Things" by Don Norman.
A few months later in 1990, Pease replied in a handwritten letter:
“Okay, Reginald, I went out and bought the book, ‘The Psychology of Everyday Things’. Read it. Enjoyed it. I was confused because at the top of page 170 he thinks there’s confusion about those one-lever faucets. I think they are neat and natural. I can’t imagine how he or anybody else might be confused.
“I got another book in December, Systemantics, by John Gall. The plane running out of oil on pages 44 and 45 of Norman’s book is a perfect example. I’d love to tell there’s a lot more good stuff in Systemantics, but I think John Carroll excerpted about 40% of the better items. Still, about worth buying. I was disappointed that neither Norman nor Gall mentions the problems and solutions from the railroads of the 1890s. For example, a guy pulls a switch lever. He thinks the rail switch is thrown so the oncoming train won’t go into the siding full of cars of dynamite. But the cable broke and it didn’t move, crash. The solution was to set up a repeater. If you pull the lever and the tell-tale moves, you know the switch did move. It’s kinda fail-safe.
“Another example, the engineers kept screwing down the adjustments on the safety valve to get a little more steam pressure. Keep it up, and ‘boom.’ The solution was to set up two or three safety valves having two or three different designs. Put them inside and under a dome, so they are not accessible or adjustable. Another problem was a train going over a switch, and as soon as it’s through, the guy throws the switch to send the next train on the other route. But the guy blinks and throws the switch too early. The first train gets ripped apart. The solution was a sort of treadle to lock out the switch from being thrown until there is nothing on it.
“I mean, people figured out this kind of interlock 100 years ago. Now, at 3-mile Island, there was one valve closed that was required to be open, and its closure was largely responsible for the inability to understand and control the mess. They should have had an interlock, a repeater, on that kind of important valve. Neither author mentioned that. When systems get big and important, ya gotta plan ahead, and not just fix the accident after the crash. I mean, 70 years ago, the best way to fix airplane design was to wait for crashes and then make improvements. These days, it’s too expensive to be so dumb. PS: Neither author mentioned the special system for making sure parachute riggers do a perfect job.”