Now that is a big door

Push? Pull?

Here’s a good example of a Norman Door from a pub in London, The Florist in east London.

It’s not as bad as it looks - due to the step in front of the door, people seem to understand that it’s a push door. How odd would it be to have a door opening out, onto a step.

(NB: Colourful language in the video!)

This is the “robbing the bookies” scene from the 2000 Guy Ritchie movie “Snatch”, where Vinny and Tyrone rob Brick Top’s bookies.

They mistakenly thought the man they followed in was their mark, “you’ve got 5 fingers!!”. So instead they’ve tried to rob the bookies and fail, miserably.

Their focus has now switched to escaping. As quickly as possible.

They are not thinking logically.

Due to Vinny and Tyrone’s heightened emotional and stress levels, they fail to see the handle on the inside of the door, they’re focusing on their end gola - self-preservation. They try to kick the door open.

Vinny shouts, “It won’t open because it’s a security door!!”.

Not quite Vinny.

They’re now even more stressed, so they start shooting at the door.

When people are in stressful or emotional situations, focusing on their end goal, they’ll often make what seem like stupid mistakes.

They misread instructions, leave out information, miss important parts.

You’ve got to understand their emotional state and try to design for it. Ideally your design does not excerbate that heightened emotional state.

How to design doors to be less confusing

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.