The Importance of Good Interface Design

From timoelliot.com:

"The background: the state of Maryland established a worksheet that graded the severity of a convict's crime and his risk to society, and was intended to make sentencing more consistent and the administration of justice a little less arbitrary.

The problem? And all too-common problem with anything to do with information and analysis: human error. Despite the high-stakes ("months and years of freedom gained or lost"), researcher Emily Owens found that the system was generating errors in 1 in 10 trials, even though there were multiple opportunities for the data to be reviewed and corrected.

And what did people find so hard about the worksheet? Simply looking at the right number!"

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2009/10/blind-and-incompetent-justice-thanks-to-spreadsheet.html

Here's the Slate Article.