The ones without the dot are to be pulled. In my university the doors which should be pushed have a white dot in theĪrea of the handle.Passed easily through both sets of doors.

People on the other side of the entranceway (to my friend's right) He turned around once more and tried the inside doors again. The door he had just entered no longer worked. He turned around and pushedĪgainst the side of a door. Locked.'So he pushed the side of the adjacent door. So when he came to the nextĭoor and pushed it, nothing happened. He didn't realise it at the time,īut he had moved slightly to the right. Then, before he could get to the next row of doors, he was distractedĪnd turned around for an instant. It swung inward, and he entered the building. My friend pushed on the side of one of the leftmost pair of outerĭoors. He expands on this quite a bit in the book The design of everyday things There is a classic story from Donald Norman, where a friend got stuck between double glass doors, as there was no intuitive, logic or informative way of getting out. So you get people stuck, desperately trying to pull with sticky palms. Brilliantly, at the moment they have trouble with the mechanics of the outer door, and there is a notice 'if the door is slow/stuck, help by pulling'. People have trouble with where the doors open, and I think that if all goggly eyes pointed to the centre of sliding, problem would be solved. Curiously: these eyes point left, right and centre. Being enormously child friendly, the outer doors are decorated with childish drawings of animals with big goggly eyes. This, I think, however is the best solution:Īt my local library, they have two double, sliding doors. Give a clue and at the same time indicate gallantry :D The appropriate way for that side of the door. You could also take it further, and this would be an interestingĮxperiment: a fairly large, maybe humorous graphic of someone holdingĪ door open.You could simply draw a palm or pawprint on the Personally, I think that images of what is not there would often do.Not opposed to words or arrows as such, but colour coding red-green Red as a colour seems to me a bad idea: red = stop, no access.If possible, remove the handle from the side where pushing is to take.Generally, doors swing out from a room or a building so as to not trap people in a fire. If you are a little fast there, you risk getting the door hitting you in the face. And most disconcerting: doors that swings in or out automatically. The world is full of examples like this some sort of operation and human input and action are needed, and the buttons, displays, feedback or lack thereof gets us stuck in the most mundane and stupid situations.ĭoors come in a lot of different configurations there are doors that swings both ways, automatic sliding doors, glass doors where there are no clues as to where the hinges are, revolving doors, handles to twist, handles to push down and then pull or push the door, bars across the door to push or pull (these often gives no clue as to which side the doors open). Never a good solution, but sadly extremely common. This is at the bottom a question of an interaction design problem that we try to fix later by graphic design. The problem of course, is that the doors are designed already broken. We need to find what to do, and where to do it: the door should give clues. Yes, you are right in that people must 'get it' before they get to the door, preferably the clues would be so clear that we do not even notice that we notice. The doorsigns I fail least are those with arrows, more than words or colors only. But this may not really be intuitive enough. The colors help a bit as the door with a green sign is open in the direction you go through, whereas the color red indicates you will have to stop first and make a movement in the other direction to open the door. 'ziehen' mean, you will also see that the arrows used here had done their job well. In case you found out now what 'drücken' vs. You will also not get this in time unless you knew what the colors are for.Ĭlick to show a better German PUSH/PULL sign Let me make an experiment with a likewise hard example of widely used door signs from Germany (deliberately not displayed inline for a better effect):Ĭlick to show a bad German PUSH/PULL sign After I have to mentally translate it first I only have a 50% chance to get it right by the time I reached the door. PUSH or PULL simply look too similar to get the meaning at first glance. This is one thing I never get right when I travel abroad.

Pull sketch icon