Good design doesn’t need explaining

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Giles Colborne’s post Why I Hate Instructions reminded me of a classic example of bad design I recently found at a restaraunt in Devon.

In this instance the instructions were necessary. This was because the mechanism for locking a bathroom door was totally unintuitive and unlike anything I’d seen before.

This should be a warning signal to a designer. If your door handle needs a note explaining how to use it, you know there’s got to be something wrong with the design.

This bathroom door handle needed a mesage to explain how to use it. The designer had managed to make locking the door something that required explanation.
This bathroom door handle needed a mesage to explain how to use it. The designer had managed to make locking a door something that required explanation.