[HN Gopher] Norman doors are everywhere (2016) [video]
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Norman doors are everywhere (2016) [video]
Author : acmegeek
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-07-14 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| baby wrote:
| * usb 2
|
| * alarm clocks with just a big snooze button. Actually even the
| iphone alarm confused me every time (how do I stop it?)
|
| * restaurants or bars that don't have a clear indication that you
| have to either wait or seat yourself
|
| * lights that have a wheel thing as the switch. You never know in
| which direction to turn.
|
| * microwaves that don't have a start button
|
| * elevators with letter floors and a floor numbered 1 (is it the
| ground floor?)
|
| * 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
|
| * 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.
| Oarch wrote:
| I read the title and assumed this was about doors from the 1100s
| (in case anyone's wondering, it's not).
| alister wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| The head office had to put a requirement in the operations manual
| that franchisees _must_ unlock both sides of the double door when
| the restaurant is open for business. That mostly solved it.
|
| EDIT: Of course a better solution would be a mechanical mechanism
| that frees both sides of the door simultaneously when you unlock
| it.
| duncanawoods wrote:
| Unlocked double doors create their own hazard. There is the
| tendency to bust through them saloon style, partly out of
| hedging your bet for which one is unlocked, only to lay a Loony
| Tunes like booby trap for anyone following behind you:
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/20YvUX1
| bartread wrote:
| In fairness though, most double doors aren't spring loaded
| like those idiotic saloon doors are so wouldn't hit people in
| the face in quite such violent fashion.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| They are though. Door closers offer some resistance on
| opening. Closers also close. Most closers are hydraulic and
| some use springs
| syntheticnature wrote:
| That still would have happened with a single spring-loaded
| door that swings both ways, which are the real problems in
| play.
| lupire wrote:
| the kid was hit by only one door. the other is irrelevant
| barbarbar wrote:
| It is actually a horrible video. Poor boy. But of course it
| shows the saloon door problem.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| 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".
| JamilD wrote:
| I've noticed this in product design a lot;
| designers/programmers assume _way_ more attention from the user
| than is typical.
|
| Most of the time, I don't read instructions, I just do what's
| "intuitive". Designing with the assumption of minimal attention
| / laziness is so important.
| erdos4d wrote:
| 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...".
| dublin wrote:
| Not once in the story, does Don Norman or any of the people
| involved recognize a key fact they _ALREADY_ know, even if they
| don 't know they know it:
|
| 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.
| tedk-42 wrote:
| Sometimes I scan the top and bottom of a door to see where the
| holds/fixed mounts are to know if I should push or pull.
| dang wrote:
| Past comments referencing this video:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| dirtyid wrote:
| 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.
| djohnston wrote:
| 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.
| mavhc wrote:
| Doors with a button off to the side to unlock? Are these ones
| with fobs to open from the other side?
|
| What's up with the plumbing and heating?
| Maxburn wrote:
| Generally security doors. Button or motion sensor on the
| inside to unlock it and exit. Probably a keycard on the other
| side to get in.
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| > Doors with a button off to the side to unlock?
|
| It is often power assisted doors that have a button on the
| side. The button can be difficult to notice, among other
| reasons because it is low in order to be reachable by
| wheelchair users.
| noneeeed wrote:
| For the interior unlocking button, how are these implemented
| where you've come from? I assume you are referring to security
| doors with fob entry on the outside and massive magnets at the
| top that hold the doors locked?
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| There are three ways: either an electromagnet holding the
| door closed directly, or an electronic strike plate that
| allows the door latch out, or the latch on the door itself is
| electronic.
|
| My apartment has the electromagnet directly holding the door,
| which I think is because it's a double door, but I think for
| single doors, the electronic strike plate is the most common.
| falcolas wrote:
| The company I worked for had these in their London office.
| Bonus inaccessibility points - the button was located _below_
| the fire alarm button, out of easy reach for 6 ' folks.
|
| Predicting the outcome of this is trivially easy.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I hate that layout, it is far too common. I've lost count of
| the number of times where I've almost pushed the fire alarm
| point.
| jimmies wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| USB-A takes 3 attempts before successful insertion. It's not a
| good example of intuitive design.
| adolph wrote:
| > it's not that you can't plug in it wrong, there is no wrong
| way to plug the cable
|
| Red text warning: _NEVER USE A CHEAP CABLE TO CHARGE YOUR
| COMPUTER NEVER USE A 3A USB C CABLE TO POWER A LAPTOP OR
| MONITOR_
|
| https://learn.adafruit.com/understanding-usb-type-c-cable-ty...
| zlsa wrote:
| Compliant USB-C cables might not always work at full speed
| (or at all, on some devices that need more power to operate),
| but they will never be a safety hazard. The only possible
| safety hazard with USB-C charging is a noncompliant cable
| with an E-markers that explicitly claims to support 5A
| charging, while the wires are sized for lower current (which
| would be a conscious decision made by the manufacturer to
| build a serious fire hazard.)
|
| (Of course, cables and connectors can be defective, and
| there's always the risk of this. But the USB-IF has spent a
| lot of time making sure compliant devices can never be
| configured in a dangerous way. It's up to the manufacturers
| to only build devices and cables that comply with the
| specifications. Unfortunately, this is less common than you
| would think. Amazon happily sells horribly non-compliant
| dongles and cables that easily have the potential to damage
| electronics or start fires.)
| gregoriol wrote:
| 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!
| warglebargle wrote:
| 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?
| lostcolony wrote:
| Sure...but it would cost less in materials, packing space, and
| machining, to replace a handle with a plate. Yes, standardizing
| both sides to be the same may offset that, but we're talking
| negligible amounts at that point. You'd actually save a
| measurable amount on an interior door if you went with metal or
| hollow core.
| warglebargle wrote:
| it's a race to the bottom, no one thinks about the door
| usability so the cheap glass one wins (they might even eschew
| a push plate because of potential fingerprints on the glass)
| - when you're building cookie cutter offices no one cares
| about how the door works. The primary concerns are appearance
| and cost.
| re-al wrote:
| Not doors, but there are many anti-patterns are intentional -
| they are there by design!
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| We are being trained to be timid acceptance lambs. :)
| baby wrote:
| You're talking about dark patterns (specifically the path of
| least resistance pattern), when the post is about bad design.
| re-al wrote:
| Many dark pattern designers, would claim 'bad design' as the
| excuse. Its hard to read intent, and hard not to suspect
| malicious intent when there is a cash value on the upside of
| the 'bad design'.
|
| I have another one - when you pay cash at a machine, and it
| does not give you the best change, but gives you the heaviest
| change. Oh and 4-way traffic management guaranteed to cause a
| huge traffic jam in the name of health and safety, when cars
| and drivers (and pedestrians) would better manage the road
| themselves without any assistance. (I suspect the traffic
| management is training for us to get used to degrading of the
| roads, so that 'self-driving' cars are able to navigate
| diversions cos of the traffic lights.)
| fartcannon wrote:
| The worst part for me is when my fellow lambs chastise me for
| trying to take a stand, even just personally.
| re-al wrote:
| Well, don't stop investigating then, its your USP :)
| hcktntng wrote:
| A weird thing I noticed: software developers complain about these
| doors a lot more than other people.
|
| 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.
|
| 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)
|
| 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, ...
| [deleted]
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| I'm an engineer, but have had a similar observation with my
| wife.
|
| I am constantly tweaking and fixing things that bug me in our
| relatively new-to-us house. The feedback is usually along the
| lines of "I never realized how annoying that was, but this is
| better". She has a strange-to-me ability to just not register
| the little annoyances.
|
| Her approach is probably a better way to go through life, but
| I'm just not wired that way.
| mikestew wrote:
| It's a thought straight from my butthole, but _The Design of
| Everyday Things_ is a book recommended amongst this crowd, and
| one of the early chapters of that book goes on about doors.
| Once you 've seen it, blah, blah, blah. Or perhaps the book
| didn't make any difference other than to validate what many had
| already noticed.
| whizzter wrote:
| Afaik the book isn't THAT known among regular software devs
| (otherwise we'd have far less shitty UI's). The doors in the
| book is mostly an obvious tool used in the book to get people
| into the right mindset to then learn about the other issues
| the book presents.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| i would like to think it's about striving for a better world
| and a want to improve things for users.
|
| but really it's probably that attention to details people are
| more likely to be drawn to the field.
| [deleted]
| psychomugs wrote:
| As socially inept as we're stereotyped to be, we arguably have
| more user empathy than the average non-builder/non-engineer,
| considering how easy it is to build things.
| JTbane wrote:
| As a software engineer, the fact that the elevators in the
| office don't have an up-peak mode in the morning and a down-
| peak mode at 5PM drives me up a wall.
| jclardy wrote:
| I just think it is a different mindset from people who build
| things for other people, vs people who don't. If you build
| consumer facing software you have to have a level of empathy
| for the user, otherwise you are going to create a hostile UX,
| similar to doors that don't indicate which direction they go. A
| small detail, but something that will at some level annoy every
| person that uses it for the first time. In software a similar
| example would be things like animations that take too long for
| often repeated tasks.
|
| In software, small affordances to improve UX are usually easy
| and cheap, requiring a few extra lines of code and a little
| more thought..and in the case of a door the only affordance
| needed is a $2 sign saying "push" somewhere.
| bhj wrote:
| A door that needs a sign to use is a classic example of bad
| de-sign (see Psychology/Design of Everyday Things)
| underwater wrote:
| That book was literally what the video was about.
| Zababa wrote:
| Here's my theory: software developers are usually empowered to
| fix their own problems. You speak about offices, these offices
| are often filled with people working on computers. Most of
| them, when they have an error, refer to someone else. Few feel
| empowered to fix their problems. On the other hand, software
| developers usually know that there's a huge chance they can fix
| this error, and thus make things righht themselves. That habit
| translates to things like doors or elevator lights.
| cirgue wrote:
| We are also (and I say this with a lot of love) massive prima
| donnas and love the opportunity to complain about someone
| else's bad UI decisions.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UnMZYMaosw
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it's two things:
|
| 1) the other way around - being the sort of person who notices
| these sorts of things inclines you towards (or is a good
| indicator you are also heading towards) engineering & CS;
|
| 2) knowing it could be different, having some idea how the lift
| display firmware is implemented makes you think 'oh but it
| could so easily do this why doesn't it', etc. If you have no
| idea how something works (or don't care) then you also don't
| really have a grasp on the limits of the black box, or how
| readily it could be improved.
| irrational wrote:
| Engineering mindset. They can imagine how it could be
| accomplished and want someone to bring it to fruition.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| As engineers, we encounter great (and poor) design choices via
| our consumption of APIs. Something that has well-chosen public
| interfaces can be a pleasure to use. At the very least, it does
| its job without calling attention to itself and allows us to
| move on with our day. A door is a great metaphor for this.
| Using a well-designed door isn't going to change your life;
| it's nothing to write home about. But a poorly-designed one can
| make someone want to pull their hair out, as is evident from
| the video. That pain is something engineers are acutely
| sensitive to as a result of using other peoples' APIs on a
| daily basis, so we're more prone to need to vent our
| frustration.
|
| In addition, I once read (I forget where, maybe it was a Paul
| Graham essay) that part of the mentality of a programmer is the
| idea that we're lazy. In the sense that we're happy to spend a
| larger-than-usual amount of effort up-front to solve a problem,
| if doing so will mean we'll save time, effort, and energy in
| perpetuity which will more than offset the up-front cost of
| those things. I think the above comes into play for me when I
| encounter a Norman door. When I think about how easy it would
| be to solve the issue (remove the handle from the side on which
| you're meant to push), and the sum total of all the people day-
| in and day-out who are having the same problem as me with this
| door, it's mind-boggling that the door would have been designed
| this way in the first place. It indicates that whoever designed
| it saw their primary concern as being aesthetic in nature, as
| opposed to practical. To me, that's shirking one's
| responsibility as a designer. As Steve Jobs said[1], "Design is
| how it works."
|
| 1. https://quotesondesign.com/steve-jobs/
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Been wondering that all my life. With my "software/geeky"
| friends we can have these discussions for hours; with my "non-
| software/geeky" friends... 0.5 seconds before being labelled as
| grouchy old geezer who should just let it go :->
|
| I think partially it's analytical minds trying to / used to
| optimizing; but the more self-flagellating part of me also
| worries if it's me/geeks or "them"/everybody-else who are bad
| at filtering/prioritizing :P
| adolph wrote:
| Not this:
|
| _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._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_architecture
|
| This:
|
| _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._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Thanks. This answered what I needed to know whilst sticking
| within the safe confines of HN
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| ... did this switch to what it's pointing?
|
| I could swear that when I visited/commented an hour ago, it was
| pointing to an article:
|
| https://uxdesign.cc/intro-to-ux-the-norman-door-61f8120b6086
| mcphage wrote:
| The Design of Everyday Things is a great book, but I feel a
| little bad that his name got attached to things that violate
| everything he pushed for :-)
| psychomugs wrote:
| > pushed
|
| :)
| lostcolony wrote:
| He also was pulling for better design.
|
| Funny how English treats both pushing and pulling as near
| synonyms for advocating for.
| heurisko wrote:
| > pulling for better design.
|
| That doesn't sound idiomatic to me, as someone in the UK.
| mcphage wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder if it's an American idiom, then?
| I'm not the commenter, but for me it sounds fine.
| jibbit wrote:
| The name was confusing for me. I was expecting something quite
| different.
|
| https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/br...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Apparently no one in modern UX design got the memo that Norman
| Doors are actually a bad thing.
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| Well they probably know, but people on the business side figure
| out that if you implement a door that's too confusing to
| operate and can keep people stuck inside your building where
| you show them more ads, it's better to use the bad door.
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(page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)