I'm surprised we are still iterating on ideas like this, to be honest. Seems flight decks have been rather successful on complicated dashboards for a long time. Same with boats. Why can we take approximately no lessons from them?
The interfaces you are talking about require years of training, study and passing multiple tests to demonstrate proficiency. In software UX we are talking about discoverability and approachability for the untrained operator.
Most of the training is to know which ones need to be on and which ones need to be off. Not how to read various buttons as on or off. And the point there is they are able to rapidly scan a dashboard to know what is on and off at a glance.
Similarly, sliders and levers help you see which ones are maxed out and which ones are set at a rough 50% or similar.
That may not be explicitly trained, but it's heavily trained becasue they must get that right to pass the tests. If they misunderstand at first, they won't for long. Also, the user is highly motivated - they don't want to crash the plane.
Consumers are often looking at UIs for the first time, and are highly motivated to go back to their feed and see what they missed.
Since failure to operate the controls correctly can get hundreds of people killed, there are detailed regulations governing how those controls must work.
OP is entirely correct that the UI field could learn a great deal from those standards.
I mean, sure? But, to that point, why discuss the conventions? If the goal is to have a predictable interface, it seems fair and in scope to study larger interfaces that people have to read quickly.
Don’t get me wrong I actually agree with you. I’d also love to have more consistent ui’s, but at the same time I get why the business wants to differentiate it self from the competition by not having a super effective “boring” ui.
What I’m getting at is that it’s a lot more nuanced than what I as a software developer might like.
I mean, we do have solutions to this problem. You use them every day. The problem is that, unlike air travel or the military, nobody can say "everybody must do it this way". So, a lot of people do it their own way.
