Blame Hawaii's apocalypse fake-out on this common video game mistake

Nobody likes a bad user interface.

It makes video games — and really, any app or software — needlessly confusing and difficult to navigate. And as we now know, it's also the reason the state of Hawaii experienced a brief yet horrifying period of existential panic on Saturday.

When an unnamed state official accidentally issued the alert about an incoming ballistic missile attack, this is the screen they were looking at:

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The official clicked "PACOM (CDW) - STATE ONLY" when they should have clicked "DRILL - PACOM (CDW) - STATE ONLY."

Friends, what you're looking at is terrible UI design. This menu for sending statewide text alerts looks like nothing more than a collection of hyperlinks, like something you'd see in an email or text document. There's nothing to make one choice stand out from the other beyond haphazardly placed all-caps words.

Beyond that, the list itself lacks any sense of organization or thoughtful placement. Why, for example, does a tsunami warning alert appear between the PACOM (CDW) and DRILL - PACOM (CDW) entries? Why are there two Amber Alert options near the top of the list and one more near the bottom? That's plainly confusing.

A well-designed UI should be intuitive. The user should be able to easily figure differentiate the various options in front of them. Sometimes it's as simple as color-coding a menu, or lumping each set of related items into a set of expandable categories.

For the more important items — you know, like a statewide ballistic missile alert — it's also probably a good idea to code in at least one or two "Are you sure you want to do this?" prompts.

We do now know that the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency software responsible for sending out the alert features a confirmation prompt after you select PACOM (CDW). It's not clear if any of the other options are followed by the same prompt, but that's besides the point.

These "Are you sure?" screens don't exist purely to give the user one more thing to click. They're there to encourage the human operator to really think for a moment about what they've clicked. That the official who sent out the alert in Hawaii clicked the wrong thing, then clicked through the confirmation screen with no apparent further consideration, is also a failure of the bad UI we see here.

Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton has done a lot of great writing about video games and their badly designed interfaces. Read his thoughts on Fallout 4 and Final Fantasy XV if you really want to better understand the unique challenges facing UI designers.

The software team working with Hawaii's EMA could benefit from a look at those articles. They've apparently added a new "False Alarm" option to the text alert menu since Saturday's epic fail, but all it does is compound the existing problem.

Take a look at the new menu:

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It's unchanged! There's one new item added to the top — which is admittedly good placement for that kind of text alert — but the list is otherwise exactly the same as it was before. If the image above seems more readable to you, it's because of the colored circles and explanatory text added to make it more readable for internet users.

This isn't rocket science. The fact that the newly PhotoShopped version above is more readable than the menu itself is a giant red flag on its own. When two clicks are all that stand between a peaceful Saturday and the international tumult of a mistakenly issued missile attack alert, the software that pushes such an alert needs to be idiot-proof.