Not being a UX/ergonomics buff, I wonder how something like this might be employed in software UIs, particularly those controlling/monitoring safety-critical systems.
You could reproduce the IRL process by adding "hover" / "speak in the microphone" steps, by I don't think they are necessary. After all, "Point it, call it, get it right" is just a mean to an end, we don't have to do exactly the same to get the same benefits.
For the "point it", it is a signification of proper intent, and it is what sliders, long click and triple fingers gestures are for: make it obvious you opt in for that feature.
E.G: the slider to open your phone so that it's not an accident, the long click to select an sms for deletion or the 3 fingers gesture to screen capture an android and not scroll.
Now, "calling" makes it sure you follow the mandatory step by step checks. So for a tool that requires it, it's easy to enforce programmatically. E.G: "multi part forms" or "first visit tour". It also lets other people survey you do the right thing. We have software rules for immediate feedback for that, and audit trails for the long term.
As for the "get it right", the "point it" is usually enough. If you want more, you have 5 strats:
> Maybe if you had to say "DELETE" out loud when hovering over the "are you sure you want to delete this?" confirmation to verify it.
I think that's almost useful, but better if it displays and asks you to echo a key fact that helps you recognize an action as important and/or confirm it's what you intended. Typing is fine; no need to do voice recognition.
* the number of machines your action will affect (for cluster management tools)
* the amount of traffic (qps, Mbps, etc) you'll affect (for routing changes, taking down servers, etc.)
* the amount of data you're deleting (some rounded form is fine) in files, bytes, database rows, etc.
* since someone else mentioned deleting a github repository: the repo's number of unique commits (ones not found in the repo it was forked from), issues, PRs, or even just stars/forks.
* the number of people you're adding to or removing from an ACL group / mailing list
That makes sense, but forcing the user to change modes is bad. If I'm using a touchscreen, I often can't make noises; if I'm using voice, I often can't touch the screen.
Congratulations, you named the very reason this technique is effective. I am not being facetious here.
The whole idea is to make the user perform disruptive, unfitting actions -both in the mind and physically- to improve chances of catching errors.
First, to both make the mind "shift gears", or perform a "context switch", with all the related cache-flushing and prediction-discarding and all that.
Second, to activate brain regions that were hitherto suspended; the ones associated with other senses and skills, in particular with vocal skills. Fleshing out abstract concepts into concrete words helps catch mistakes, just like putting abstract feature requests into concrete diagrams or code helps with catching errors or inconsistent expectations & assumptions.
Fair enough; I missed that mikro2nd mentioned safety-critical systems. In that case, sure, let's adapt the whole environment to allow for those mode changes.
I was thinking more about systems where no lives are at stake, and there I think there's no need to change modes, one can be DISRUPTIVE ENOUGH by using the same IO channels, which are quite flexible already.
Any UX experts in the house?