My 20 month year old son Tristan made a visit to my office last week. As we were leaving, he fell victim to my office’s front door. For years I have despised this door, as no matter how many times I walk through it, I always fall for it’s crappy affordances.
This is a door that opens outward as you walk through it from inside my office, so to open it you must PUSH. Myself, and many of my co-workers, continue to PULL on the handles to these doors as we are leaving the office. In many cases, it’s because we allow instinct to take over and guide our movement rather than step in and control our behavior directly. This is due to the fact that we are normally on the phone as we are leaving, calling clients one last time, or checking in with home for any last minute errands before heading home. Seriously, after over 4 years this is a door that plagues me and many others!
The lesson my son taught me, was that we humans have a naturally ability to compute and react to perceived affordances. (Something I already knew being a UXer, but he nailed it home) It wasn’t until this little human, who is still trying to figure out the world around him, attempted to PULL on the door rather than PUSH on it that it dawned on me that our reactions to affordances is almost instinctual. In a world where we are constantly exposed to more and more stimuli, I believe we are becoming more reliant on our ability to instinctively react to perceived affordances more than ever.
So why does this matter? It matters because as designers tackle problems that impact our everyday lives, it’s imperative that our instinctual reactions to affordances are taken into account. If you save me the five seconds it takes for me to figure out WHY the door isn’t opening when I PULL on it, then you are making my life a bit more stress free and easier to navigate. And if I ever meet you face to face, I’ll probably give you a hug.
So if you are someone that is trying to solve the everyday problems of people, consider how a toddler might behave when presented with a particular affordance. Because chances are, a busy adult with umpteen-million things going through their brain will react the same exact way.