Turning an oil tanker around
So the saying goes that UX is about change. You conceptualize and design a change in the way something is done, all in the hope to make things better for at least one of the parties involved in that thing.
But if that change you envision goes beyond tweaking the shape of a button and becomes The Change. And then you will be told: Oh, but that’s a big one. That will take time: you know how long it takes to turn around an oil tanker.
There is something so viscerally poetic in this argument that makes it really beautiful. We all have an image in our mind of a massive steel structure that is the very image of the unstoppable force on its way through the ocean. It is immediately obvious that it may take ages, generations, millennia even until the day comes when you can at last expect to see some visible change in its course.
So obviously you should nod and keep on plodding away at your work. And when you come back to check on the progress made re: The Change, you can expect to get the answer: yeah, we’re on it, but you know how long it takes to turn around an oil tanker.
Until, after the nth time going through that cycle, you may start to wonder: is this just a way to distract me from the fact that actual change may not be forthcoming. But what to do about this? You could, for example, ask: how long does it actually take to turn around an oil tanker?
How long does it take to turn around an oil tanker?
Luckily, you wouldn’t be the first to ask that question and can turn to the BBC’s More or Less for an answer. They asked Mel Irving, who works on advanced simulation and data modelling at South Shields Marine School, coming from a 14-year seagoing career on a variety of ships, including tankers. He ran this through their advanced simulator manager. Running the simulation for your typical VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) – i.e. massive oil tanker – of about 330 meters length going at full speed doing a complete 180° turn, the result was: 270 seconds. That’s 4.5 minutes to turn an oil tanker around – about the time it takes to make a cuppa.
“That,” Mel Irving goes on to explain in the interview, “is probably a lot quicker than most people would anticipate.” I tend to agree.
Asking the right questions
So next time somebody tells you that doing this or that or the other thing is like turning an oil tanker around, tell them you expect them to be done then by the time you bring the tea, and they should start thinking about what else they want to spend their afternoon with.
Or you could try to have a conversation about how long it might take to turn around this particular oil tanker, given the particular set of rudders and machinery available. Because then, you’re talking about what really matters: what does it take to turn the tanker around, and do the people at the helm really want to do it?
