Door usability
April 30th, 2006
There are sliding doors into the underground station at Nationaltheateret in Oslo.
Obviously, people got confused, walked into panels that did not open automatically, that did not function as doors. The wall of glass doors has a “false affordance”; parts of it look like they would open, but don’t. So someone decided to paint arrows to help people distinguish the door parts from the non-door parts.
The arrows do not help.
Some arrows point towards the door, some point where the door is going to go. Like this:
> > <> > < < > < < > > < <
Some of the arrows have fallen off, making it even harder to figure out.
A better solution would have been to put arrows only on the non-sliding parts, or better yet, add a half-tone or checkboard pattern to those parts instead of using an arrow. A clear window then indicates a doorway, while a translucent window indicates it functions as a wall.
I enjoy this little dance with the doors nearly every day, because it reminds me of the first chapter in Don Norman’s book on Everyday Things. It features a glass-door trap as an example of poor design.
Entry Filed under: Usability
2 Comments Add your own
1. clay | June 18th, 2006 at 01:19
Perfect pages… tnx
2. Jens Meiert | January 16th, 2007 at 10:19
Haha. Now that is horrible door usability, right. Reminds me of my recently posted “camouflaged” door without any door handles. Hopefully, writing about such problems will get us any further anyway.
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