Yesterday, Macworld ran a ‘travelogue’ of sorts I wrote up about my week at Macworld. That writeup pretty much covers anything Mac-related during the week, and also includes a somewhat surreal cloud shot I snapped during the flight home. However, there were a couple of things that weren’t necessarily Mac-related that I wanted to cover here.
Whenever I’m out and about, I tend to notice odd or unique design and development decisions..as well as things that just seem strange in general. A couple such items caught my eye last week, the first of which is seen at left.
I walked past these signs every day on the way to the convention center. And every day I wondered—why bother allowing parking for one lousy hour each morning? This particular stretch of street isn’t fronting a hotel or big industrial complex, and it already has a loading zone area for deliveries. So what’s the point of preventing parking from 2am to 6am, then allowing it until 7am, and then blocking it again until after 9am? Who could possibly need to drive into downtown San Francisco, park on a meaningless block for an hour at a time when basically no stores are open, knowing they had to be back to their car in less than an hour? Perhaps some city-dwelling resident can enlighten me, but to this suburbanite, it makes no sense at all!
Still in the hotel, I found the layout of the buttons in our hotel’s elevator to be one of the worst design decisions I’ve seen recently. First, as you can see in the image below, they’re mirrored buttons on a mirrored background, labeled with white text against a dark mirror-like background. They’re also laid out in such a way that it’s very hard to visually figure out the right button to push—everything looks the same. (The image is cropped; I think there were 36 floors in the hotel, so this panel is tall).
I got lucky; my floor was on the right edge of the layout, so it was reasonably easy to find. But without fail, everyone else that I saw in the elevators had to do a bit of searching to find the proper button.
The other very strange layout decision is to place an often-used button, the close-door button (second from the left in the bottom row) next to a button that should clearly only be used in emergencies (the alarm bell button, to the right of the close door button). Combine the positioning with the confusing layout and monochrome theme, and you’ve got a recipe for a lot of useless alert bell sounds. And I should know; my room was located right next to the elevators, and I heard the bell quite a few times during the week. Stupid! The bell (and phone) buttons should be in their own row, colored bright red, and be blatantly obvious. But who am I to question…
The the extent to which design affects our lives--both positively and negatively--never ceases to amaze me. Good designers should be (and probably are) worth their weight in gold. Bad designers, as your post shows all too clearly, are everywhere. Create a team that combines excellent engineering with outstanding design, and you have a company that produces really great, easy-to-use products. I can think of at least one such company off the top of my head. I bet you can too. ;-)
There's a sign outside of the New York library which I have a non-digital photo of with the caption "Don't even think of stopping here". :-)
I also quite liked a sign off Route 101 in CA near the Redwood national park; unfortunately, it was raining at the time and dark, so it wouldn't have made for a good photo. It said on a 40 foot sign, with an arrow pointing up and to the right, "Information sign". I'm not entirely sure if this was a sign from God, or at least pointing towards him ...
In both cases, the explanation is easy if you understand what the designers were optimizing for.
In the case of the parking signs, they were optimizing for the use of the street by moving vehicles.
I.e. the parking/stopping restrictions make sense if you look at them from the point of view of the reasons behind them:
- no stopping during rush hours
- no parking during the hours when street cleaning is done
The design is all about preventing parking. Whatever hours are left over during which parking is allowed is completely accidental.
In the case of the elevator, they were optimizing for visual effect. I.e. to look good. Functionality/usability is an also-ran. This is unfortunately still often seen with some corporate web sites.
I saw an even worse instance of the elevator alarm button type misdesign with a radio unit that was to be installed in a corporate trucking fleet. It had a panic button (sends a distress call) right next to the volume control!
I've quickly posted a good sign from my hometown on my homepage. The "high collision location" signs were brought out a few years ago in an attempt to make people more aware at certain places in the city. Statistically, Edmonton drivers are the worst in Canada so there are quite a few of these signs around the city. The drivers might be better if the cops weren't so strict in enforcing enforcing people to collide. I think someone else noticed the odd message the city was sending because the "strictly enforced" has since been removed.
The signs would be easier to comprehend if they listed the hours you *were* allowed to park.
Given floor numbers are vertically arranged, the buttons on the lift should be arranged that way too (plus it's the convention). And yes, totally agree about the alarm and door open/close buttons (personally I have to pause and think about what the open/close icons mean, the words 'open'/'close' would be easier for me to process).
Ever thought when you push on a 'pull' door that it was a design flaw instead of your pre-coffee state; or had to think about which of the 4 horizontal dials on your stove operates which of the 2x2 elements? Did you know there's actually a standard to have the hot tap on the left?
You may enjoy The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman!
Rob:
Thanks for sharing your "cloud shot". Here in Seattle where we've (at least in my area) had rain for 33 straight days, having a few sun rays to look at offers some relief. Also, I've always had some facination with flying above the clouds.
BTW - finding parking spots in the SF downtown area must be one of the most difficult places on this earth. SF does not encourage cars in the downtown area at all and parking fines at the $250 level are quite normal there for the slightest violations.
For "fans" of bad design, take a quick web-hop over to http://www.thisisbroken.com. This is a pretty funny collection of submitted entries illustrating bad design descisions in real life. Rob, your signs and elevator button would be right at home there.
I know this is out of place, but I just downloaded the Smart Unread Comments and installed it, but when I click on the "mark comments as read" it takes me to a page where I have to click on a link to get back to my blog. I just tried this out on your site and it went right back to where I was. I tried using a redirect, but it didn't seem to want to allow me to use a redirect. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot and sorry for posting this here.
Hmm, wish I could help. I didn't do much other than install it; I don't recall tweaking it at all.
There is a bit in the Read Me about needing to add a bit to your index.php if it doesn't exist, as I recall. Perhaps that's the problem?
-rob.
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