office interior design definition
there’s this door on the 10th floor i justhate so much. goddammit! do you ever get this door wrong? “prettyregularly.†how often? “like 30% of the time.†have you seen people misuse it? all the time. every day. constantly. i hate this door. me too kelsey. but here’s the thing: as soon as you startlooking for confusing doors. they. are. everywhere.
why? i feel like roman mars would know why. roman: this is 99% invisible, and those doorsyou hate are called norman doors. what’s a norman door? roman: don norman wrote the essential book about design. he is the ‘norman’ of the ‘norman door.’ alright – and where is this guy? roman: â€you must go to san diego†okay!
don: hi joe! i’m don norman. i’m… gee it’s hardto describe what i am. roman: well, he’s been a professor of psychology, professor of cognitive science, professor of computer science, a vice president of advanced technology at apple. but for our purposes don: i was spending a year living in cambridge, england, and i got so frustrated with my inability to use the light switches and the water taps and the doors even, that i wrote this book. if i continually get a door wrong, is it myfault? don: no. roman: a norman door is one where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you’re
actually supposed to do, or gives the wrong signal and needs a sign to correct it. don: why is such a simple thing, why does it need an instruction manual? that is, why do you have to have a sign that says pushor pull. why not make it obvious? roman: it can be obvious if it’s designedright. don: there are a couple really basic principles of design, and one of them i’ll call discoverability. when i look at something, i should be able to discover what operations i can do. roman: the principle applies to a whole lot more than doors. don: "and it’s amazing with many of ourcomputer systems today, you can look at it and there’s no way of knowing what’s possible. should i tap it once, or twice, or even triple
tap? discoverability, when it’s not there,well you don’t know how to use something.†roman: another is feedback. don: so many times, there’s no feedback– you don’t know what happened, or why it happened. roman: and these principles form the basis of how designers and engineers work today: commonly known as user- or human-centered design. don: i decided user was a bit degrading, why not call people people? it’s amazingly simple, and amazingly seldom practiced.†we call it iterative because it goes around in a circle. we observe what is happening today, people doing the task.
and from that, we say we have some ideas. here’s what we propose to do. joe: then you prototype the solution, andtest it. and this process has spread all over the world, and is improving lives - from better every day things like the ones don wrote about,to using the process to solve huge problems in public health in developing countries – water, sanitation, farming, and lots more. so what’d be a better, human centered door? don: an ideal door is one where that as iwalk up to it and walk through it. i’m not even aware that i had opened a door and shut it. and i don’t have to be aware because it’s so well designed that it’s just automatic.
so if you had a door which had a flat plate,what could you do? nothing. the only thing you can do is push. so, see? you don’t needa sign. flat plate – you push. roman: this kind of push bar with the piecesticking out on one side works well too, so you can see what side you’re supposed topush on don: vertical bars could go either way. asimple little hand thing sort of indicates pull. roman: but we still have terrible, terribledoors in the world. so many of them. don: there are lots of things in life arefairly standardized. whether i buy this house or not is not a function of whether it hasgood doors in it. except for safety reasons,
doors tend not to be improved. roman: but the tyranny of bad doors must end. i think that it’s a really shitty designthe fact that the put a pull handle when it’s a push. so it should be a flat panel here.and not a goddamn pull handle. that’s how i feel about this door. it’s very misleading.(i agree) roman: you’re right becky. you’re goddamnedright. and if we all thought like you, well, we might just design better world together. "it won't open because it's a security door!""what the **** are you two doing in here?" hey, so as you can see, since i started makingthis video, they've since changed the door
a little bit. guess it's a step in the rightdirection. thank you so much for watching and to 99% invisible, one of my favorite podcasts,it was so much fun getting to collaborate with with them. check them out on any podcastapp or 99pi.org.