PROBLEM:
These are the doors leading to a hallway on the third floor of building three at MIT. I use them to exit the floor after 6.s063 ends. However, after the first day of classes, it took me more than a couple of seconds to figure out what was going on with these doors before I could successfully make my exit. Seen in Image 1 are the doors on floor three. They have connected vertical and horizontal bars, which makes students confused on how exactly one should open the doors.
The dimension of usability involving efficiency suffers because these students are spending extra time trying to figure out how to open a door when they should be using that time to quickly go to their next class instead. As Don Norman mentioned, door hardware can signal whether to push or pull without signs. From our natural mapping of previously using various doors, a horizontal bar usually affords pushing while a vertical bar usually signifies a pull. In the case of our doors, both bars support the affordance of grasping but to push or pull is not completely obvious. There are, theoretically, no constraints in if one should push or pull because both types of bars are displayed for use.
SOLUTION:
The designers of these doors must have realized a need to create better affordance because the barely visible stickers on the horizontal bars states “PUSH.” However, students rarely look down while walking. Instead, they are looking forward through the glass doors trying to navigate to their next class. Therefore, the “PUSH” sign should have been placed on the vertical bars. To further solve the design problem, the vertical bars should be removed completely. Because the doors are meant to be pushed, keeping the horizontal bars would be logical (even the “PUSH” sign could be removed because users would have enough mapping to naturally push the doors). The doors shown on Image 2 show just the horizontal bars with no “PUSH” label, which is what the design of the other side of the door should have followed.
PROBLEM:
This is a sink on the third floor of the CMS Department at MIT. I will not lie: It was the first time I felt little anxious trying to turn on a sink. Depicted in Image 3, this sink has both a handle and a knob. Theoretically, this is an awesome sink because you can turn it on and adjust the temperature of the water. However, one may not know what to do first because of the open options. Should they lift the handle or press down on the handle to turn it on? Should they adjust the knob and then adjust the handle or vice versa? Which way gives hot water and which way gives cold water?
Again, the dimension of usability involving efficiency suffers because people are spending extra time trying to figure out how to turn on a sink when they should be using that time to quickly wash their hands and return/arrive to their appointments. From our natural mapping of previously using various sinks, a handle usually affords lifting up or down and a knob usually afford twisting left or right. Both mechanisms support the affordance of grasping, but to lift up or push down and twist left or right is not completely obvious. After a quick trial and error on my end, I realized that you had to lift up the handle to turn on the sink. You could turn the knob first or lift the handle first as it was up to the preference of the user. The more confusing part was knowing which way the knob had to be twisted in order to get hot or cold water. Ironically, twisting left dispensed cold water while twisting right dispensed hot water (as displayed in Images 4 and 5). Back in my dorm, it was the opposite: You had to twist right to get hot water and twist left to get cold water. Because of this, my already cold hands were met with icy water, and I was not amused.
SOLUTION:
In order to solve the design problem of figuring out which way to turn to get the desired temperature of water, stickers/labels with colored arrows (blue for cold and red for hot) could be placed in the direction of the turns that give their respective outputs. Additionally, a sticker/label could be placed at the end of the handle to indicate that it should be lifted up. However, when affordances are taken into good consideration, the user should know what to do just by looking (with no picture/label required). Therefore, potentially changing the design to having just two differently colored knobs (one for cold and one for hot water) could be another possible solution. Changing the design to include just a handle would not be ideal since users would not be able to adjust the temperature of the water to their liking. Additionally, a motion-activated sink would be better than a handle because the transfer of germs would be minimized while still maintaining the same output.
PROBLEM:
This is the lock to my dorm room at MIT as depicted in Images 6 and 7. It looks simple, and it mostly is to a certain extent. When taking a first glance, you might think that the lock would be able to turn in all directions. However, you can only turn it up or right. That is fine, but the real question is, which way locks the door and which way unlocks it? That was not even a thought that popped up until after I was locked out of my room with no keys and no roommate.
In this scenario, the dimension of usability involving safety suffers because the error of getting locked out with no keys or roommates and a class to go to in five minutes is a pretty big one to recover from a perspective of a student. The errors may be few, but they are needed to be resolved urgently because they could affect schedules and efficiency. On the flip side, if people wanted to lock their door but ended up leaving it unlocking instead, the risk of getting their items stolen and damaged inside the room/building becomes much larger. Last year, I had a different room in the same dorm, and the way to lock the door was to turn the knob right. From my natural mapping of previously using door locks in my dorm, I thought the same direction would apply to my current lock. However, this was not the case because the way to lock my current door is to turn the knob up.
SOLUTION:
To fix this problem, a sticker/label could be placed to indicate the direction of locking/unlocking the door. A high tech, excessive approach would be to replace the locks entirely with student ID tap access pads. Students do not carry around their keys or physical IDs on campus anymore. They use their phones that have their digital IDs instead. Therefore, using tap access to unlock dorm rooms would provide another solution that may end up being easier and even safer for the students (i.e. no one would be able to enter the room unless they had the resident or ID of the resident with them).