The shortcut across the grass

Walk through almost any park and you will find a worn line across the grass, cutting the corner that the paved path goes around. Designers call these desire paths, and they are the clearest free feedback any designer ever gets.

The usual response is a fence, a sign or new grass seed. All three fail in the same way. People step around the fence, ignore the sign and walk on the new grass, because the shortcut saves twenty seconds and the alternative requires agreeing that the original path was right.

A smaller number of designers do the opposite. Some university campuses have been built with no paths at all for the first year, leaving students to walk where they wanted, and then paved exactly the lines that appeared. The result is a layout nobody has to be persuaded to use.

The idea generalises beyond parks. A form that everyone fills in wrongly in the same place is not a form with bad users. A door that everyone pushes when the sign says pull is reporting something. A rule that everyone breaks in one identical way is describing a path somebody should have paved.

The hard part is not noticing the worn line. It is accepting that the worn line is information rather than disobedience, which usually requires admitting that the first design was a guess.