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Journals by EmailI saw an unintentional exercise in usability while sitting in an STC Summit education session on Tuesday in the Hyatt Regency hotel. It’s expected conference behavior, at least at STC conferences, that if you decide within the first 15 minutes that a session isn’t what you expected or that it won’t meet your needs, you can get up and go to a different one. I was sitting at the left end of one row near the door and watched a couple of people leave this particular session, and each person’s interaction with the closed door was not optimal.
Some of the session rooms were set up using relocatable walls. The doors in the walls were designed, I assume, to not take up any more space on the Z axis than the rest of the wall to make storage more tidy. This means that the person who designed the latch mechanism had to figure out an alternative to a knob or handle.
The result was a three-inch-wide button with the word PUSH printed three times around its perimeter (see the photo). You disengage the latch mechanism by pushing the button.
Whatever it accomplished, this design didn’t really meet people’s needs, or at least it didn’t meet conventions so that most people would understand how to use it.
The first person approached the door and slowed, looking at the latch mechanism somewhat warily. She figured it out, pushing the button and then opening the door.
The second person didn’t have as much luck. She tried just pushing the door open, then tried turning the button. She finally tried pushing the button itself, and the door reluctantly gave way.
Now, I think that this person saw the PUSH instruction and maybe interpreted it as “push the door.” But I think she was also a little self-conscious because her initial effort to exit failed, and the longer she stood there, the more notice she attracted. I wonder what her thoughts were as she finally got out of the room, but I’m sure they weren’t positive.
Whatever the reasons for that particular design, I don’t think it was designed with people in mind other than the fact that it had instructional text on it. The majority of people who would use the door are accustomed to doorknobs or latch handles, not a button. I don’t blame someone for having to look twice before deciding how to get out of the room. Maybe the word PUSH should have been PUSH HERE or PUSH HERE TO OPEN.
The same principle I observed with this door apply to other design processes. If we design anything, a piece of furniture, an appliance, a software application, a help system, to meet its own needs or to express our own cleverness, ignoring the needs of the users, we’re inviting trouble. We’re opening the door—pardon the play on words—to the user becoming embarrassed and flustered while trying to use the product, leading to greater error and to a negative opinion of the product and its maker.
Thanks to Trina for taking the picture.
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