Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error

This book wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. The stories of each disaster are good, but I was also expecting a detailed post-mortem on each one, listing and discussing all the things that went wrong, the lessons learned, and more details on the fixes that were applied afterwards. There's almost none of that in the book! The things that went wrong, or were poorly designed, are only mentioned in a conversational way during each story, and sprinkled around the rest of the story. So I felt like almost every story wasn't finished, they need a proper conclusion to each one. I was disappointed about that.

I had to get this for a college course but read the whole thing. It tells industrial accident stories very well. More like hearing about it from an informed witness than a formal write up.

I first read Set Phasers on Stun (the first edition) as a textbook in one of my safety classes in college. In addition to being one of the most entertaining textbooks I ever had, it also had the deepest impact on me as far as illustrating how quickly and easily catastrophes can happen. Many of the cases presented in the book leave you shaking your head and wondering how such a simple mistake or oversight could lead to such horrific consequences.I've used many of the cases in this book as examples when trying to make a point during my safety career. I would highly recommend this book to any engineer or safety professional. It's also entertaining reading for anyone with an interest in technology and complex systems.

Important examples for anyone involved in design. I have bought this book 3 times and keep giving it away to co-workers to help their development.

Each chapter is a separate dramatised story based on actual accounts of accidents and disasters. You know something bad is going to happen in each story but you don't know just how bad. It can be edge of the seat stuff.A powerful message is built up illustrating how easily preventable accidents and disasters can be, if only more attention was paid to design of machines and acceptance that humans can make mistakes.

It's frightening to read accounts of tragedies and disasters that occur when designers can't put themselves in the position of a typical user operating the equipment they have designed. If I had a dollar for each time a software engineer asked me "why would anyone ever do it that way?"...

This book is very entertaining and an easy read. It's made up of several short cases of how poor user design resulted in catastrophic results. For those who deal with design and human factors occasionally, the stories stay pretty fresh in the mind and serve as a great reminder to ensure reasonable effort is put into human factor design aspects of projects.

This is one of those books. You dread the next chapter because it will be as gut wrenching as the last, but you can't put it down. A must-read for anyone who designs anything!

Far more interesting than most health and safety books and provides some interesting examples of what happens when we get it wrong.

Needed it for a class. Out of all the listings, this one had the best price and it came quick in good condition.

Full of some great stories.