I'm sure everyone has experienced double doors at the front of a business in which one of the two doors is locked. A relative of mine used to be the director of franchising of a restaurant chain and he noticed that literally hundreds of people would try to open the wrong side of the door every day in every restaurant where this happened. When he asked store managers or the employees about this, he would get evasive or invented answers: it keeps the heat in on cold days (or keeps heat out in air-conditioned locations) or that the second door wasn't working.<p>Hardly anyone wanted to admit the real reason, which turned out to be as silly as you can imagine. The first employee of the morning that came to open up the restaurant opened one side of the double door. Flipping up the hasp that frees the second door is a bit of a chore, so he or she wouldn't bother. And nobody else bothered as well.<p>The head office had to put a requirement in the operations manual that franchisees <i>must</i> unlock both sides of the double door when the restaurant is open for business. That mostly solved it.<p>EDIT: Of course a better solution would be a mechanical mechanism that frees both sides of the door simultaneously when you unlock it.
Not this:<p><i>The term Norman architecture is used to categorise styles of Romanesque architecture developed by the Normans in the various lands under their dominion or influence in the 11th and 12th centuries. In particular the term is traditionally used for English Romanesque architecture. The Normans introduced large numbers of castles and fortifications including Norman keeps, and at the same time monasteries, abbeys, churches and cathedrals, in a style characterised by the usual Romanesque rounded arches (particularly over windows and doorways) and especially massive proportions compared to other regional variations of the style.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_architecture" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_architecture</a><p>This:<p><i>Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935)[2][3] is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego.[4] He is best known for his books on design, especially The Design of Everyday Things. He is widely regarded for his expertise in the fields of design, usability engineering, and cognitive science.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman</a>
There are a lot of annoying stuff about the computer interface nowadays. But in terms of connectors, there are a lot of good stuff we take for granted now. Like how intuitive and fool-proof the connectors are.<p>So a couple of days ago, I have just fried all three hard drives with the backup of my data, at the same time. They were installed in a new caddy I bought with a common molex receptor for power. There molex receptor has a giant sticker blocking it saying you will fry your drives if you connect to the molex receptor in reverse. I got the pinouts right, tested, it worked. Then, I had to bring the caddy to under my desk. I was scooting under the desk and couldn't see very well. I fumbled and put the cable on reverse, it didn't go in. However, the molex connector got just enough contact to fry the drives.<p>What I'm trying to say is if it was the USB-A connector or the sata power connector, the issue wouldn't have happened because the pins are recessed. It wouldn't have made contact even when I tried to plug in reverse. I just assumed the molex worked the same way and was wrong.<p>The situation is even better with usb-c now, it's not that you can't plug in it wrong, there is no wrong way to plug the cable. It doesn't matter what the voltage is, the chip will negotiate the power. USB succeeded for a reason, and I'm glad that it did.
Not doors, but there are many anti-patterns are intentional - they are there by design!<p>Eg, "Accept All" cookies - always there. "Reject All"? No. Click preferences, scroll to the bottom, past all the minimised options that hopefully are not selected, then choose the ambiguously named "Confirm my choices" (when I haven't made any choices). This stuff is on purpose! Its there to make you lose the will to live, and just accept whatever crap they have to offer. Like phoning your broadband or energy supplier. Or being able to swap out your phone battery. Or have a machine auto-call or text you to harass you, if you are 1 day late on a payment.<p>The point is that there is a cash value to many of these 'problems' even if they can be easily engineered away. Its the weaponisation of irritation and hassle, and its ubiquitous in modern living.<p>Where this ends up, is that we are forced to accept, accept, accept. Its not a great mental state to be in - its the mentality of the prisoner. One cannot help be far less proactive in a modern society - you cannot take things in hand - to get anything done needs to escalated up the ladder.<p>We are being trained to be timid acceptance lambs. :)
A weird thing I noticed: software developers complain about these doors a lot more than other people.<p>I worked in a big office building with lots of kinds of people, and on the internal chat devs would always complain about a couple of these doors.<p>They would also regularly complain about a few other things, which while indeed being real, they would be considered minor by other people, one example - not being able to see from a distance if an elevator is busy, with the suggestion of placing elevator availability lights throughout the floor (like plane toilet lights)<p>I wonder what's the cause, is it attention to detail, being a bit further on the spectrum, too much free time so you hang out on internal chat, ...
It's funny that he got his start in design after being frustrated with UK appliances. As a recent UK immigrant I concur that the UK has the strangest and least intuitive designs for everything from doors (weird button off on the wall to unlock from the inside) to plumbing and heating appliances that I've seen anywhere. I do like the outlet switches though :D.
Always love when this pops up. I always think of it when I use a credit card and the POS device says "do not remove card" and then "remove card". I think it would be much clearer to simply say "insert card" or "leave card inserted" and "remove card" and not rely on the small, hard to read and understand modifier of "not".
* usb 2<p>* alarm clocks with just a big snooze button. Actually even the iphone alarm confused me every time (how do I stop it?)<p>* restaurants or bars that don’t have a clear indication that you have to either wait or seat yourself<p>* lights that have a wheel thing as the switch. You never know in which direction to turn.<p>* microwaves that don’t have a start button<p>* elevators with letter floors and a floor numbered 1 (is it the ground floor?)<p>* washing machines and dish washers that don’t really have a good way to tell you that you did start it and you don’t have to press the button again<p>* coffee machines that don’t give you a good way to know if the pod you have in there has been used already or not.
The main issue I seem to have isn't with push vs. pull but with pushing on the hinge side of the door due to a push bar that looks the same the whole way across.
Two things I noted<p>1. The terrible doors get "fixed" with exactly the wrong patch.<p>2. Norman worked for Apple but the video specifically references tapping/double tapping and trackpads, illustrated by is clearly an Apple macbook trackpad. I guess that's less of a hardware problem than it is a software one, but the trackpad is remarkably free of affordances and discoverability on its own.
My favorite bad design is the bathroom light switch in northern Europe. Most are located in the hall outside the bathroom, because why should the person in the bathroom control the light in the bathroom, right? I've asked a lot of Scandinavians about this and whether that makes any sense, and I always get a sheepish "Well, perhaps not...".
I just failed at a door last weekend at a place I don't know, and when the person working there came to push it open, I thought it was a joke, it clearly looked like a pull!
This topic deserves mention of Gibson affordances, which predate Norman's work<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance</a>
... did this switch to what it's pointing?<p>I could swear that when I visited/commented an hour ago, it was pointing to an article:<p><a href="https://uxdesign.cc/intro-to-ux-the-norman-door-61f8120b6086" rel="nofollow">https://uxdesign.cc/intro-to-ux-the-norman-door-61f8120b6086</a>
Not once in the story, does Don Norman or any of the people involved recognize a key fact they <i>ALREADY</i> know, even if they don't know they know it:<p>By intuition, you'll first try to PUSH on a door with a HORIZONTAL bar or handle (or push-plate, of course), and PULL on a door with a VERTICAL handle. This is why the "shit door" at Vox's office is so frustrating - it's a long vertical handle that you have to push! If you have to put a sign on it, like Vox did, the design was screwed up in the first place.
The handle/touchpoint is not full user journey, let's pull back and explore the approach, the threshold navigation, the bio-mechanical motion & timing — the bigger picture: "How to open a door - Finnish instructional video from 1979"[0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wof0xPUmW38" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wof0xPUmW38</a>
Past comments referencing this video:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=yY96hTb8WgI&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...</a>
Japanese architect Arakawa and American architect Madeline Gins believed fucking shit up was good for longevity.<p>They designed the Bioscleave House in New York -<p>"Ceilings and entranceways extend across varying directions and heights, either along straightened or curved edges. Similarly, windows and light switches are strewn along the walls at inconsistent heights. Arakawa and Gins firmly believed it was integral for domestic environments to be constructed in layouts that rendered residents with a sense of instability and discomfort. "<p><a href="http://www.reversibledestiny.org/bioscleave-house-lifespan-extending-villa/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reversibledestiny.org/bioscleave-house-lifespan-e...</a><p>Always makes me think when I read stories about bad physical design.
Wonder if prevalence rate of bad designs is correlated to increased access to design. Budget projects don't mess around with funky yet ambiguous fixtures.
the first door in their video is built that way because you can choose which way it opens… a lot of poor ux is a cost cutting effort. It can be frustrating to find building fixtures that exist between lazy low-end and overthought high-end. Maybe because of how the middle class has been hollowed out?