The queue at the wrong door

Some doors are pushed when they should be pulled. This happens so often that designers have a name for it: a door that gives the wrong instruction through its shape is called a Norman door, after the writer who complained about them.

The problem is never the user. A flat plate says push, because a flat plate offers nothing to hold. A vertical bar says pull, because a bar is shaped for a hand to grip. When a door has a bar on the side that must be pushed, it is telling you one thing with its shape and the opposite thing with a small sign, and the shape wins every time. People do not read doors. They look at them.

The lesson travels well beyond doors. If a product needs a label telling people how to use it, the label is a patch over a design decision. Lift buttons that need an arrow explaining which way is up, taps that need a note about which is hot, forms that need a line saying 'do not write in this box' — each one is a record of something that could have been shaped differently.

This is a useful habit of mind for anyone building anything, including a school website or a classroom routine. When you find yourself adding an instruction, pause and ask whether the instruction is fixing a problem or hiding it. Sometimes a sign is genuinely needed. Quite often, the sign exists because changing the shape was harder than printing a notice.