What’s wrong with this door?
Posted by jonoscript under
Uncategorized | Tags:
affordances,
UI FAIL |
[16] Comments
In the Mountain View building complex that houses the main Mozilla offices, there are many doors like this one.
What's your natural reaction to a vertical door handle? You grab it like this...
...and pull it to open, right?
But if you're on the inside of the door, then pulling does nothing. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who I've seen encounter these doors has made this mistake.
The other side of the building, a few meters away, has doors like this.
The outside handle is vertical, the inside one horizontal.
When you're on the inside of the door, your natural reaction is to put your hand on it like this, and push.
The architects of the building had a perfect solution to the handle problem, so why did they use it on only half of the doors?
Don Norman would not be amused.
February 12, 2009 at 10:26 pm
In my first year of university, we learned about this in Psyc. They called them “psychologically incorrect doors.” It has driven me crazy ever since. I don’t understand why more people don’t notice this when they are installing doors.
February 12, 2009 at 11:21 pm
This is a topic I know about. I work in the door business. Almost 100% of all entrance doors in large occupancy buildings, require the user to push out when exiting the building. This is a safety feature! The natural reaction when a person panics is to push. However, this doesn’t apply to residential building, most require the user to pull.Anyways you made a great example of the importance of proper door hardware.Oh by the way, you may notice the doors are also designed differently. One has a stile and one has no stile (glass).
February 13, 2009 at 12:18 am
Even with doors without handles I’d love to work over there : )
February 13, 2009 at 1:03 am
I don’t see that much difference between the two door designs – the horizontal handle doesn’t particularly suggest ‘push’ to me, so my first reaction would be to curse whatever idiot put the handle where I’d have to reach down to it.
For simpler design, don’t put handles on doors that aren’t meant to be pulled. Provide some kind of marked area to push on instead, e.g a metal plate opposite the metal handles. Then, it’s clear at a glance that the door is meant to be pushed.
February 13, 2009 at 1:21 am
I think the better set of doors were recently replaced, and the bad set have been there since we moved in.
February 13, 2009 at 9:42 am
Well i thought US is more technically advanced country.. why no sensor doors?
February 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Why not solve it completely and for everybody by making them swing in both directions?
February 13, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@Alien: Because that would be too expensive, and at times, overly complicated. The only place that uses sensors to open/close doors are supermarkets, and that is because most people walk out with a cart, and opening the door manually wouldn’t make sense.
February 13, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Are there no “Push”/”Pull” stickers in the USA?
February 14, 2009 at 1:46 am
Oh, this drives me up the wall.
February 14, 2009 at 12:19 pm
@smurf doors should not require a manual! 😉
February 15, 2009 at 12:27 am
We have this same problem on the doors of at least one building here on campus at UVM (there’s probably more). It took me a while to remember which side of the doors was pull and which was push. It really drove me nuts.
I’m glad I’m not the only one bothered by things like this.
February 15, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Note: when there is a fire, you want your doors to open outward… think “screaming horde”. Unfortunately not all doors follow this code.
July 13, 2009 at 4:02 pm
If the door did not have any handle at all it would have been funnier, some people would probably just push the door with their body and surprisingly the door would knock them down.
July 15, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I am sorry but all of you must be mentally challenged. You have been walking in and out of buildings your entire lives. Unless you frequent building built before building codes were enforced than you have always pulled the door to get in and pushed the door to get out. Write it on the back of your hand if you get confused about something you do every day.
December 5, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Hey we’re a Custom Doors manufacturer and regularly see this on doors. Hahaha, great post, thanks for the read.