Confusing Sign: Push or Pull ? (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

USA / Pennsylvania / Pittsburgh / Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 campus, design -to be removed/cleaned, architecture - Do not use this category, signboard
The doors from the Duquesne University Union Center building into the Academic Walk promenade can only swing in a precise way: the door on the right can only be pushed, while the door on the left can only be pulled. Actually, it cannot even be pulled, since there is no handle to grab and pull.
Don Norman, in his book "psycology of everyday things", describes how objects have "affordances". In this case, the door that can be pushed has a clear affordance of being abled to be pushed, but the door that is labeled PULL has no affordance of being pulled, since it is lacking a grabbable handle.

In modern buildings, the fire code usually dictates that doors can only open outward, since in a situation of panic, people inside a building are rushing outward. In this case, both doors would have to be labeled PUSH.

The designers and architects of the building wanted to convey the traffic pattern of keeping pedestrian traffic to "your right", thus forcing pedestrians walking outward to keep their right and choose the door on the right, and at the same time forcing pedestrians walking inward to keep THEIR right and choose the door on the left, that can only swing inwards.
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Coordinates:   40°26'10"N   79°59'27"W

Comments

  • Very true! Whenever I return from a vacation in India to Germany, I walk up stairs on the left side and bump into my fellow country men/women who are walking on the right!
This article was last modified 17 years ago