Formerly known as 16.3, here I speak on
design, WordPress, and the world.
I recently visited a university campus that was absolutely captivating. I really loved the architecture, the school grounds, even the placement of the buildings. I found it beautiful how all of the classrooms were all automated and the professor could – with a touch of his finger – turn off the lights or deploy the projector screen, all through a touch screen built into his desk.
There was one thing I didn’t like, however: the staircases. Rather, not the staircases themselves, but the signs posted inside of them. For all the marvel and grandeur of design everything else was, the signs that indicated what floor a person was on were created remarkably without thought. It completely killed the experience.
The signs looked something like this:
BUILDING 19
STAIR D
LEVEL 3 OF 5
EXIT DOWN TO 1
NO ROOF ACCESS
When I saw a sign like this, my first thought was that I was on the nineteenth floor. It occurred to me that it would be a long way down, and that I should have taken the elevator. Then I pondered how I had managed to climb up all that way.
Obviously, by now you realize what I had mistaken: I had thought the building number was the floor number. But you try running down steps and glancing quickly at a sign as jampacked as this one, and you’ll see what I mean.
This sign fails in terms of usability.
The thing about usability is that it a) occurs everywhere, not just in things like website or graphic design, and that it is b) often the opposite of design. Where design is an art that tries to show itself off to the user, usability must remain in the shadows, hidden.
Ever had a pet peeve about something that you used? Maybe your coffee cup’s handle is oddly shaped so that holding it for a while hurts. Maybe the chair you’re sitting in refuses to sit still and just has to wobble. Maybe that electrical outlet you used was oddly oriented so it hurt your hand when you plugged something into it.
If you’re like me, when you use these things that are badly designed, you groan and make a comment about how poorly thought out the thing was. You rarely notice a cup that conforms perfectly to your hand, or a chair that lets you lean back just the right amount. That electrical outlet that was tilted so you could reach it perfectly didn’t seem much to you.
You might say it was nifty, but that would be the furthest extent you would go. Don’t worry – I’m not chiding you. It’s what everyone does. You don’t notice good usability design, only bad design.
That stairwell sign we talked about a while back could have been redesigned, maybe to look something like this:
LEVEL 3
That’s right – there’s only one thing left: the floor number. You might notice I left out the total number of floors, where to exit, whether roof access is present, and which building and stairwell the user is in. But that’s the thing: they don’t care!
Does average Joe need to go onto the roof? Probably not. Does Joe know which floor to exit on? Probably, since it’s standard convention to locate exits on the first floor. Does Joe know which stairwell and building he’s in? Nope, but why does he need to? All he’s trying to do is get to whereever he’s going.
For those opportunities where unaverage Bob does have to know whether he can get to the roof, however, the designer can put a row of icons or small text at the bottom. That way, if he or she really needs to know which staircase they’re in – in an emergency, for example – they can just check. But for our average Joe – why does he care?
Interestingly, on the university campus I visited, not one building I entered, nor any floor I was on, indicated they actually had roof access. I can’t confirm that there aren’t any, but I did visit a plethora of floors and buildings. I laughed at how the basement stairwell signs explained there was no roof access.
I don’t mean to be bashing on the university, however. If you’ve visited it, you might know which one I’m talking about. The college was a wonderful place and, with the exception of those pesky stairwell signs, was beautifully designed. But one of these days, I’m going to think I’m on the nineteenth floor again.
Note: It can be argued that humans can read the entire sign in a short amount of time, as I did for each time I saw one of them. However, the time it takes to process the sign and determine the floor number could be easily eliminated if the signs were designed smarter.
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Publish date Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Comments 3 comments
Word count 823 words
Reading time About 4 minutes, 6 seconds
Hey, I just found out about you through Schooltraq, you seem pretty smart. I’d like to point out though that these signs aren’t for you, they’re for emergency personnel. Sure, maybe we don’t care that the basement has no roof access, but if the building is on fire and you want to get to the roof, it might be important. The stairway letter helps firefighters because they usually have building floor plans as well. This stuff isn’t there because everyone wants to read it, it’s there because it might one day save a life. Usability is definitely important, but you shouldn’t claim that these signs should be designed smarter based on your perspective because you’re not their intended audience.
Kevin Wang
University of Chicago 2014
Kevin, thanks for your comment. While I do realize your point about the emergency personnel, perhaps there should be two signs, one placed slightly less significantly than the other that has instructions for emergency personnel? This is an interesting question.
Well, the issue arises that when there’s a blazing fire, there’s no time to look around for a sign, you want it to be in your face and easy to find. For the most part, stairwells are usually not designed to actually be used (the exception being university buildings as they tend to be older). They serve as a secondary, fallback method of traversal through the building. If you look at office building stairwells, you’ll see pipes running through them, unfinished walls, and so on, simply because they expect most people to take the elevator. The reason universities tend to have a notably higher number of people using stairwells is because the demand for inter-floor transportation is highly erratic, spiking when classes start and end: elevators simply can’t handle that spiked capacity, so people start using stairs. I’m all for minimalistic principles, but applying them to what amounts to essentially a maintenance layer would end up defeating the purpose of the stairwell.