Why do people usually push the door when it says pull?
Alright, auto-question, let's do this. I see a lot of this disparaging of people for "not being able to read" when they do a door wrong, especially from people who love to revel in the "stupidity" of others to make themselves feel better about themselves.
Listen up. If the only thing telling a person how to open the door is a tiny bit of text then you have FAILED as a designer. Your job is to make the user experience of a person walking through a door so seemless that they do it without even thinking about it! Having to stop and read directions is a bad door experience.
There's a series of doors near me that I hate. It's in a long breezeway connecting two sky walks. The first two doors you go through are glass push doors within long vertical handles. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, the next two doors (which look exactly the same with the same handles) are pull doors. There is of course a tiny placard with the word push or pull on there. Every single time I go through this passage I see it fuck people up. Every time! And its often catches me even though I went through it many times before!
And the thing is, I can see the logic of why the designer switched the doors. They change at a central nexus with an adjoining hallway, so it "makes sense" that the would always open inwards to the nexus. But, whatever, this person clearly didn't playtest their damned doors.
I hate those doors.
Anyway, to answer the question, people usually push the door when it says pull because the door designer FUCKED IT UP.
Listen up. If the only thing telling a person how to open the door is a tiny bit of text then you have FAILED as a designer. Your job is to make the user experience of a person walking through a door so seemless that they do it without even thinking about it! Having to stop and read directions is a bad door experience.
There's a series of doors near me that I hate. It's in a long breezeway connecting two sky walks. The first two doors you go through are glass push doors within long vertical handles. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, the next two doors (which look exactly the same with the same handles) are pull doors. There is of course a tiny placard with the word push or pull on there. Every single time I go through this passage I see it fuck people up. Every time! And its often catches me even though I went through it many times before!
And the thing is, I can see the logic of why the designer switched the doors. They change at a central nexus with an adjoining hallway, so it "makes sense" that the would always open inwards to the nexus. But, whatever, this person clearly didn't playtest their damned doors.
I hate those doors.
Anyway, to answer the question, people usually push the door when it says pull because the door designer FUCKED IT UP.
