Darin Ellis sends along this radio story about a woman’s robotic heart that has a malfunction warning system that literally breaks the textbook HF rules of alarm design. I’ll let Darin explain the unfortunate issue:
This woman, who is living thanks to a robotic heart, related a story of the “heart” malfunctioning. Apparently, although not prone to malfunction, there is a very particular way to recover from the malfunctioning state [it warns you via an alarm]
She was (luckily) at home. The alarms went off blaring like crazy. Her young kids react to the alarm and start screaming and crying… Then she had to figure out what was wrong and try to remember how to fix it in the right order. With the kids AND the alarm still blaring. Anyone see what is wrong here, or is it just me?
I am sure she is very grateful for this “heart” but the story made me cringe. I am sure that when your heart literally stops, you don’t need alarms blaring to tell you something is wrong
[Weblink to streaming audio at The Story]
(post image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/105509373/sizes/o/)
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I get flustered when my car alarm goes off and I can’t get it to stop. [It took over five embarrassing minutes the last time it happened.] I can’t imagine how stressful a heart-malfunction alarm would be.