Michelle: Alright Mark, I have a question for you. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your daily relationship with doors? Mark: My relationship with doors? It’s a toxic one, Michelle. I’m pretty sure I spend half my life pushing when I should pull, pulling when I should push, and occasionally just walking into a sliding door that I thought was a regular door. It’s a daily dose of humility. Michelle: I love that. Because that feeling of humility, or maybe feeling a little bit stupid, is exactly what we're talking about today. You’ve just perfectly described a "Norman Door." Mark: A Norman Door? Is that a clinical diagnosis for my door-related incompetence? Michelle: It might as well be! It’s a term that comes directly from the book we’re diving into: the revised and expanded edition of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. He’s so famous for pointing out this exact problem that the entire design world named these confusing doors after him. Mark: No way. That’s incredible. So you’re telling me there’s a whole book about this? Michelle: There is, and it’s a classic. Norman is a cognitive scientist and engineer, and he was actually the very first person at Apple to have the title "User Experience Architect" in his job. He basically helped pioneer the entire field. The book argues that the problem isn't you, Mark. The problem is the door. Mark: That is the most validating thing I have heard all week. But it does raise a question. A door is about as simple as it gets. Why is it so hard to get right?

Michelle: That question is the heart of the book. It’s what Norman calls "The Psychopathology of Everyday Things." And he tells this fantastic, slightly terrifying story about a friend of his that perfectly illustrates the problem. Mark: Okay, I’m listening. Michelle: This friend was in a European city and tried to enter a post office. The entrance was this grand, imposing row of six glass swinging doors, with a second, identical row right behind them. You know, the kind designed to be an airlock. Mark: Right, very modern, very sleek. Michelle: Exactly. So sleek, in fact, that there was no visible hardware on the doors. No handles, no plates, nothing. The friend just assumed he could push any of them to get in. He pushes one, it swings inward, and he walks into the little space between the two rows of doors. Mark: So far, so good. Michelle: But then he gets a little distracted, moves slightly to the side, and when he goes to push the second set of doors, nothing happens. He tries the one next to it. Still nothing. He’s getting a little confused, so he decides to just go back outside. He turns around, pushes the first set of doors again. Nothing. Tries the next one. Nothing. Mark: Oh no. I can feel the panic setting in. He’s trapped. Michelle: He is completely trapped. He starts to panic. Just then, a group of people walks past him on the far right and goes through both sets of doors effortlessly. He rushes over, follows their path, and finally gets out. He later realized he had been pushing on the hinged side of the doors. The design was so focused on aesthetics that the hinges were completely invisible. Mark: Wow. Trapped by a door. That’s both hilarious and horrifying. What does Norman call that? Michelle: He breaks it down into two fundamental principles of good design: discoverability and understanding. Discoverability is about figuring out what actions are possible and where to perform them. Understanding is about knowing what the thing does and how to use it. That beautiful glass door had zero discoverability. Mark: Okay, that makes sense. But I’ve heard designers throw around words like 'affordances'. Is that what was missing? Michelle: That’s a great question, because Norman makes a really important distinction in this revised edition of the book. An affordance is the relationship between an object and a person—what actions are possible. A chair affords sitting. A flat plate on a door affords pushing. But the affordance can exist whether you can see it or not. Mark: So what tells you the affordance is there? Michelle: That’s the signifier. A signifier is the signal, the cue, that communicates where the action should take place. The flat plate on the door is a signifier that tells you to push. A handle is a signifier that tells you to pull. The problem with the post office doors was a complete lack of signifiers. The affordance to push the correct side was there, but there was nothing to signal it. Mark: I see. So affordance is what you can do, and the signifier is the hint that tells you how to do it. Michelle: Precisely. And Norman has this fantastic line: "When external signifiers—signs—have to be added to something as simple as a door, it indicates bad design." If you have to put a "PULL" sticker on a door with a flat plate, you’ve already failed. The design should speak for itself. Mark: I’m never going to look at a door the same way again. But honestly, a confusing door is just a minor frustration. It’s annoying, but what’s the big deal? It’s not like it’s life or death.

Michelle: Well, that's the scary part, Mark. Sometimes, it is. The same design thinking—or lack thereof—that creates a frustrating door can, in a different context, lead to absolute catastrophe. Mark: Okay, now you have my attention. What are we talking about here? Michelle: We're talking about the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Mark: The nuclear meltdown. How does that connect to a badly designed door? Michelle: In the aftermath of the accident, Norman, who was an engineer before he became a cognitive scientist, was on the committee that investigated what happened. The initial blame, as it almost always is in these situations, was placed on "human error." The operators in the control room were blamed for misdiagnosing a simple mechanical failure, which then spiraled out of control over several days and led to the destruction of the reactor. Mark: Right, I remember that. The story was that the operators messed up. Michelle: That was the story. But when Norman and the committee investigated the control room itself, they found it was so poorly designed that error was practically inevitable. The controls were confusing, the feedback was unclear, and the layout made no logical sense. It was the 'Norman Door' problem scaled up to a nuclear level. The operators were set up to fail. Mark: Wow. So the people who were blamed were actually victims of the design? That’s a huge shift in perspective. Michelle: It's the central argument of the book. And it led Norman to this powerful conclusion, which is one of the most famous quotes from the book: "It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines." Mark: That gives me chills. It completely flips the script on who is responsible. We’re so used to hearing "it was human error" as the final word. Michelle: Exactly. Norman argues that "human error" is a lazy diagnosis. It’s a symptom, not a cause. The real work is to do a Root Cause Analysis—to keep asking "why" the error occurred. Why did the operator push the wrong button? Because the layout was confusing. Why was it confusing? Because it wasn't designed with human psychology in mind. You keep digging until you find the systemic flaw. Mark: So instead of training people not to make mistakes, which is impossible, we should be designing systems that anticipate mistakes and make them less likely, or less catastrophic. Michelle: You've got it. It's about designing for how people actually are—fallible, distractible, and working under pressure—not for how we wish they would be. This is the core of what he calls Human-Centered Design (HCD). It starts with observing people, understanding their real needs, and then building things that serve them, rather than forcing them to adapt to the technology. Mark: It’s fascinating because this idea seems so obvious now, but the book was first written in 1988. Norman was way ahead of the curve. Michelle: He really was. And it's a lesson that many industries are still struggling to learn. Think about overly complex software, confusing medical devices, or even just that Italian washer-dryer Norman mentions in the book. It had so many features that the owners, a physician and an engineering psychologist, were too intimidated to use it. They just memorized one setting and ignored the rest. All that brilliant engineering was wasted because the design failed to communicate its value. Mark: That’s the story of my life with every new TV remote. It’s got 50 buttons, and I use three of them. The rest are just a minefield of potential mistakes. Michelle: And you probably blame yourself for not reading the 200-page manual, right? Mark: Every single time. But now I’m just going to blame Don Norman for not having redesigned my remote yet.

Michelle: I think he’d appreciate that. But it’s amazing how it all connects, isn't it? Mark: It really is. It starts with a simple door that makes you feel stupid, but you realize that same broken design philosophy, when applied to a power plant control room or an airplane cockpit, can have catastrophic consequences. It’s the same fundamental problem, just scaled up with much higher stakes. Michelle: Exactly. The frustration you feel at a "Norman Door" and the panic an operator feels in a confusing control room come from the same place: a failure of the design to communicate with the user. It’s a breakdown of empathy. Mark: Empathy. That’s not a word I usually associate with engineering or product design. Michelle: But that’s the book's deepest insight. Good design isn't just about making things pretty or even just making them functional. It's a moral act. It’s about taking responsibility for how our creations impact people's lives. It’s about choosing to reduce frustration and prevent disaster. And it’s a choice that many designers and companies, as Norman points out, often fail to make when they prioritize aesthetics or features over people. Mark: It’s a powerful idea. It makes you look at the world differently. You start seeing the hidden intentions, or lack thereof, in everything around you. Michelle: It absolutely does. And it makes you wonder, what 'Norman Doors' are we accepting in our own lives or workplaces? What systems are we blaming ourselves for, when really, they’re the ones that are badly designed? Mark: That’s a great question. I’m already thinking of a few. I bet our listeners are, too. We’d love to hear about your own "Norman Door" experiences. Find us on social media and share the most frustratingly designed thing you have to deal with. I need to know I’m not alone in my battle with doors. Michelle: You are definitely not alone. The world is full of them. But thanks to this book, at least now we know who to blame. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.