https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open.
Oh yes! It's one of those "WTF" moments and you want to find the company that designed that thing and send them the book. The book is really an eye opener.
This is not to dispute the (great) value of the book, but to point out that there's often more than one use case.
That said, door design is a good example for many other things. To give you a particular one, a certain DVD player/recorder made by Panasonic has two large buttons on the upper corners of its front panel. One is the on/standby button and the other is the eject button. They placed the on/off button right next to the DVD tray, and literally everyone who has attempted to place a DVD in it has accidentally turned it off instead. Given it takes 20+ seconds to power cycle, this is extemely annoying, but of course not painful enough to ditch the whole thing as it otherwise works fine. You don't get used to it either, it's a jarring experience every time. Given neither switch is actually on the PCB and both are wired in, it would have been trivial to flip them around (and one of these days I will do so), but the designers didn't think of it.
As for poorly designed power switches. I do not at all dispute the majority of the philosophy of this class. Even plan on taking the class, myself. I just find the door fixation obnoxious.
As a counterpoint, I usually reach towards cars. Most are very similar to each other, yet as someone that used to have to rely on rentals, the first 2 minutes in any car are spent making sure I know how to do all of the basics. The myriad ways to control a windshield wiper, adjust the brightness of the inner lights, reset trip timers, etc, is quite impressive. Same for the radio and its highly varied functions.
The fact that this even needs to be said is a sad comment on people's lack of imagination.