You’ve encountered a door like this. One that looks like you should pull on it, but really you’re supposed to push. Those doors you hate have a name: “Norman doors.”
They’re named after Don Norman, a UC San Diego cognitive scientist, who identified this phenomena in his book “The Design of Everyday Things.”
According
to Norman, pushing on a door that says “pull” isn’t necessarily your fault. It is just poorly designed.
So what’s the solution to this mess?
Norman explains two principles of design that make objects, including doors, more intuitive to use.
One is discoverability — that is, just by looking at the door, you should be able to detect what you could do with it. So a door with only a flap would be more intuitively interpreted as something you push on rather than pull.
A well-designed object should also provide you feedback while using it.
Feedback involves any visible, tactile, auditory or sensible reactions that help signal whether your attempted use of the object was successful. In the case of doors, the twistable knobs would signal to you whether the door is locked or not.
And perhaps the true test of a well-designed door may be whether your family cat can open it with ease.
Phantom Limb casually flipping people off with a pleasant smile or very even-tempered look on his face in the middle of what sounds like very reasonable conversation on a regular basis.
Phantom Limb trying to offer his hand for a handshake and getting increasingly annoyed as the other party keeps grabbing air or too far up his arm, to the point where he just says “fuck it” and kills the guy.
Phantom Limb gesticulating while speaking to try and emphasize what he is saying and people not understanding him because no one can see his gestures.
