Designing Human-Centered Systems: Homework 1
So I'm sitting in on the Designing Human-Centered Systems class and I decided to do the first homework assignment, albeit 6 weeks late. The task is to walk around a couple of the buildings on campus and comment on some design issues mentioned in the assignment.
The first task was to find GHC 5222. This sounds like it'd be in the Gates Hillman Center on the 5th floor in corridor 2, next to all the other 52** rooms. Actually, it's halfway between the 4th and 5th floor on the "helix ramp," and it's not next to any other rooms at all. The 22 ending totally didn't help me guess. On the bright side, there was some clear signage next to one of the stairwell exits that specified its location, although a new student might not know exactly what a "helix ramp" is.
The next step was to take Stairwell 1 from the 5th floor to the ground floor. This was perfectly normal until floor 3, when this happened:
Why do you have to exit at floor 3 and then go back in? This seems peculiar, but actually I eventually realized there's a good reason for it. It's designed to reduce the chance that in the event of a fire, people from the top floors accidentally run past the exit on the 3rd floor and go down to the first floor. You see this a lot in other buildings on the first floor, to prevent people from going into the basement in the event of a fire.
From this design, it seems like the 3rd floor of GHC is comparable to the first floor of many buildings. In that case, why not just renumber the floor as 1? Floor 2 and Floor 1 can become something like L1 and L2, B1 and B2, or A and B. They pretty much are below ground anyway except for a ravine (possibly man-made) that leads to the first floor.
Another gripe: in the main part of the stairwell, how can you tell which floors it goes to? You actually have to look over into the other part of the stairwell, but that's partially separated from you by a wall.
The next task was to find the restrooms in the Collaboration Innovation Center. I didn't find a single sign that pointed out where the restrooms were. I just meandered around aimlessly, eventually spotted a hidden corridor which wasn't visible from the main entrance, then spotted a water fountain in that corridor. Knowing that water fountains are often next to restrooms, I looked over there and eventually found the men's room.
Another quirk about the CIC is that there are 2 sets of elevator. I eventually figured out that one only services the parking garage, and one services the other floors. I've seen this before in places that have security you have to pass through on the first floor, but CMU does not. It does, however, have the parking permit machines located across from the parking garage elevators on the first floor. I guess that's to make sure users see these machines. They could have just put one on every floor of the parking garage next to the elevator and had one set of elevators that service every floor instead though. As you might guess, this setup seems to confuse a lot of people, as evidenced by this sign:
The final task was to take a look at the CIC stairs. The stairwell has a swinging gate in front of the stairs down to the lower levels. This probably serves to discourage people from running into the parking garage during a fire. I guess it's similar to the GHC design. Honestly though, I had no idea of the purpose of either one until I read Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things. When I've encountered those before, I've just looked at them with great confusion.
The first task was to find GHC 5222. This sounds like it'd be in the Gates Hillman Center on the 5th floor in corridor 2, next to all the other 52** rooms. Actually, it's halfway between the 4th and 5th floor on the "helix ramp," and it's not next to any other rooms at all. The 22 ending totally didn't help me guess. On the bright side, there was some clear signage next to one of the stairwell exits that specified its location, although a new student might not know exactly what a "helix ramp" is.
The next step was to take Stairwell 1 from the 5th floor to the ground floor. This was perfectly normal until floor 3, when this happened:
Why do you have to exit at floor 3 and then go back in? This seems peculiar, but actually I eventually realized there's a good reason for it. It's designed to reduce the chance that in the event of a fire, people from the top floors accidentally run past the exit on the 3rd floor and go down to the first floor. You see this a lot in other buildings on the first floor, to prevent people from going into the basement in the event of a fire.
From this design, it seems like the 3rd floor of GHC is comparable to the first floor of many buildings. In that case, why not just renumber the floor as 1? Floor 2 and Floor 1 can become something like L1 and L2, B1 and B2, or A and B. They pretty much are below ground anyway except for a ravine (possibly man-made) that leads to the first floor.
Another gripe: in the main part of the stairwell, how can you tell which floors it goes to? You actually have to look over into the other part of the stairwell, but that's partially separated from you by a wall.
The next task was to find the restrooms in the Collaboration Innovation Center. I didn't find a single sign that pointed out where the restrooms were. I just meandered around aimlessly, eventually spotted a hidden corridor which wasn't visible from the main entrance, then spotted a water fountain in that corridor. Knowing that water fountains are often next to restrooms, I looked over there and eventually found the men's room.
Another quirk about the CIC is that there are 2 sets of elevator. I eventually figured out that one only services the parking garage, and one services the other floors. I've seen this before in places that have security you have to pass through on the first floor, but CMU does not. It does, however, have the parking permit machines located across from the parking garage elevators on the first floor. I guess that's to make sure users see these machines. They could have just put one on every floor of the parking garage next to the elevator and had one set of elevators that service every floor instead though. As you might guess, this setup seems to confuse a lot of people, as evidenced by this sign:
The final task was to take a look at the CIC stairs. The stairwell has a swinging gate in front of the stairs down to the lower levels. This probably serves to discourage people from running into the parking garage during a fire. I guess it's similar to the GHC design. Honestly though, I had no idea of the purpose of either one until I read Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things. When I've encountered those before, I've just looked at them with great confusion.