Comment Re:Not the engineers fault (Score 1) 383
The user should have a total understanding of the thing they are manipulating
Unfortunately the market reality is that this is simply not going to happen. The machines I code for are in medical labs all around the world. There is a shortage of trained lab technicians and as a result, more and more needs to be automated. Your average (even well trained) lab-tech has to operate radically different instruments from a number of different manufacturers within the space of a few minutes. I've visited labs to get a feel for how the techs work and the workload of a busy lab is insane; it's all too easy to make mistakes.
There is more and more emphasis on the manufacturer to make it as easy and error-proof as possible. Deep training on a single piece of machinery is often not possible except in a sitation where that's the only thing the technician does all day. Most manufacturers are trying to ease this by putting similar user interfaces on all their machines and making the workflow as similar as possible. But that only helps across the product line of a single manufacturer, not when you have to deal with Bayer, Siemens, GE, and Hitachi machines all in the same aisle of the same lab.
It's not an easy problem to solve by any means and we are all too well aware of the consequences of failure.