Designing doors - a simple open and shut case
How easy is it to design a door? If I gave you a pen and paper you could sketch one out now, right? So, if you had studied 7 years for a degree in architecture you’d have no problem creating the perfect door? Wrong.
We all go through numerous doors a day, so surely something so familiar can’t be difficult to design. It’s hardly new or cutting edge technology. Put simple it’s just a barrier, hinged on one side with a device to open or close it. Sounds idiot proof. Well take a look at the photo and tell me what would you do to get into the toilet?
If you think ‘pull the handle’ congratulations you’d have the correct action. However join the queue because this door would not open because of a basic error in the usability of the design.
I spent ten minutes this week standing outside the gent’s toilet at Canary Wharf underground station to carry out some impromptu usability research. Or to put it another way, to prove that it wasn’t just my stupidity that failed to use something as technologically undemanding as a toilet door.
Beyond getting some weird looks and raised eyebrows from the station staff, particularly when I whipped my camera out to take photos (hey, everyone needs a hobby), I’m glad to report the results vindicated my failure.
In this simple interaction test 67% of people pulled the handle and the door didn’t open. Undoubtedly some were saved by the labelling on the door which is helpful if (a) you read English and (b) you can be bothered to read instructions for something as simple as operating a door. Now this might just be a problem for men. With the worry of being heralded a pervert I didn’t carry out the same test outside the women’s toilet.
What’s exasperating is this huge failure rate can so easily be fixed by giving the door handle the correct design affordance. By removing the offending handle and replaced it with a flat plate would lead to only way to interact with the door and therefore no confusion and 100% task completion.
It’s not as if Canary Wharf station was put together by an amateur on a budget. Designed by Sir Norman Foster and built for €43,000,000 the station was named as the Best Transport/ Infrastructure building at the World Architecture Awards in 2001.
It is an amazing structure, a temple to modernity and a cathedral to commuting. I just wish the architects had been a little less concerned with being flash and paid a little more attention to the flush.
