There’s this door on the 10th floor I just
hate so much. Goddammit! Do you ever get this door wrong? “pretty
regularly.” How often? “like 30% of the time.” Have you seen people misuse it? All the time. Every day. Constantly. I hate this door. Me too Kelsey. But here’s the thing: as soon as you start
looking for confusing doors. They. Are. EVERYWHERE. Why? I feel like Roman Mars would know why. Roman: This is 99% invisible, and those doors
you hate are called Norman doors. What’s a norman door? Roman: Don Norman wrote THE essential book about design. He is the ‘Norman’ of the ‘norman door.’ Alright – and where is this guy? Roman: ”You Must Go to San Diego” Okay! Don: Hi joe! I’m Don Norman. I’m… gee it’s hard
to describe what i am. Roman: Well, he’s been a Professor of psychology, professor of cognitive science, professor of computer science, a vice president of advanced technology at apple. But for our purposes Don: I was spending a year living in Cambridge, England, and I got so frustrated with my inability to use the light switches and the water taps and the doors even, that I wrote this book. If I continually get a door wrong, is it my
fault? Don: No. Roman: A norman door is one where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you’re actually supposed to do, or gives the wrong signal and needs a sign to correct it. Don: Why is such a simple thing, why does it need an instruction manual? That is, why do you have to have a sign that says Push
or Pull. Why not make it obvious? Roman: It can be obvious if it’s designed
right. Don: There are a couple really basic principles of design, and one of them i’ll call discoverability. When I look at something, i should be able to discover what operations i can do. Roman: The principle applies to a whole lot more than doors. Don: "And it’s amazing with many of our
computer systems today, you can look at it and there’s no way of knowing what’s possible. Should i tap it once, or twice, or even triple tap? Discoverability, when it’s not there,
well you don’t know how to use something.” Roman: Another is feedback. Don: So many times, there’s no feedback
– you don’t know what happened, or why it happened. Roman: And these principles form the basis of how designers and engineers work today: commonly known as User- or human-centered design. Don: I decided user was a bit degrading, why not call people people? It’s amazingly simple, and amazingly seldom practiced.” We call it iterative because it goes around in a circle. We observe what is happening today, people doing the task. And from that, we say we have some ideas. Here’s what we propose to do. Joe: Then you prototype the solution, and
test it. And this process has spread all over the world, and is improving lives - from better every day things like the ones Don wrote about,
to using the process to solve huge problems in public health in developing countries – water, sanitation, farming, and lots more. So what’d be a better, human centered door? Don: An ideal door is one where that as I
walk up to it and walk through it. I’m not even aware that I had opened a door and shut it. And I don’t have to be aware because it’s so well designed that it’s just automatic. So if you had a door which had a flat plate,
what could you do? Nothing. The only thing you can do is push. So, see? You don’t need
a sign. Flat plate – you push. Roman: This kind of push bar with the piece
sticking out on one side works well too, so you can see what side you’re supposed to
push on Don: Vertical bars could go either way. A
simple little hand thing sort of indicates pull. Roman: But we still have terrible, terrible
doors in the world. So many of them. Don: There are lots of things in life are
fairly standardized. Whether I buy this house or not is not a function of whether it has
good doors in it. Except for safety reasons, doors tend not to be improved. Roman: But the tyranny of bad doors must end. I think that it’s a really shitty design
the fact that the put A PULL HANDLE when it’s a push. So it should be a flat panel here.
And not a GODDAMN pull handle. that’s how i feel about this door. it’s very misleading.
(I agree) Roman: You’re right becky. You’re goddamned
right. And if we all thought like you, well, we might just design better world together. "It won't open because it's a security door!"
"What the **** are you two doing in here?" Hey, so as you can see, since I started making
this video, they've since changed the door a little bit. Guess it's a step in the right
direction. Thank you so much for watching and to 99% invisible, one of my favorite podcasts,
it was so much fun getting to collaborate with with them. Check them out on any podcast
app or 99pi.org.
I’m the guy responsible for reviewing the hardware submittal and making sure the right shit is on the right side of the door. With that said, the guy installing this shit should have a brain too.
TL;DW: Put push plates on the push sides of doors.
In college, I lived in an apartment whose front lobby door was the worst door I've ever experienced — far exceeding anything in this video.
From the lobby going outside, you had to push a spring-loaded paddle to release the latch...but the door was a pull door. This meant you literally had to push and pull at the same time. I eventually developed a technique to awkwardly twist my hand in such a way to push the paddle while pulling the door handle so I could do it with one hand.
To be fair, it was kinda fun watching visitors leaving my place struggle and fail to open the door every. single. time. I had to give a demonstration to every person that tried. I don't even want to think about how illegal that is with current fire egress requirements...
RAGE
Yeah, no new information here. Hardly seems worth discussing. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about this Norman guy though.
Shouldn't that lobby door open into the hallway for egress? The doors could have been pushed back to make room for the door swing.
I'm pretty sure that a vertical bar where the top part is farther away from the door will only get pulled because you'd grab it higher up and think of a one-armed-bandit kind of lever action.
The first time I saw this video I went out and picked up Don Norman's book. It's a really interesting read if you're into design philosophy.
I can't stand this upspeak/TedTalk/NPR affected voice nonsense. unwatchable.