There’s no way to intuitively know how to open the doors where I work. The handle–a bar that spans the width of the door–looks like it can be pulled or pushed. What’s more, some doors you push to open, and some you pull, and it’s completely arbitrary, at least as far as I can tell.
In fact there’s one way you can tell what action to take. There’s a mechanism at the top of every door. If it’s on your side, you push. If it’s on the other side you pull. So every time I go to open a door I instinctively look up. I don’t break my stride, and it’s all very easy. Problem solved.
But I shouldn’t have to look up anymore. I mean there are only 4 sets of doors I open on a daily basis. I should know by know which ones I pull and which I push. I should have had that memorized already. Wait…this is leading somewhere design related, read on…
The mechanism at the top of each door was pointed out to me by a coworker. Had he not relayed this useful bit of information I would probably have soon thereafter memorized the door situation, and never have needed to rely on looking upwards. In fact I was on my way towards doing so. I was in the process of constructing a mental model of the pattern of push/pulls that made sense to me; mental models give their owners intuitive understanding of objects and how they are to be interacted with. In this case I was coming up with some sort of construct that rationalized the seeming arbitrariness of the direction the doors swing, a construct that would be intuitive enough to allow me open each door without thinking.
I no longer need to do this, though, because looking up is easier than constructing that mental model, (perhaps because the doors do swing completely arbitrarily, and any model I conceive would be somewhat contrived, and therefore not really that useful). The point is, that I ceased my efforts to find that model, and stuck with what was easy–looking up. And I really never though about that consciously until now. How many other interactions in my day to day life–in all of our day to day lives– are made up of those same patterns of subconscious thought–finding the easiest way to do something, without ever really thinking about it.
Powered by ScribeFire.
