design vs. usability

Saw an interesting example of the power of affordances the other day.

We were visiting a (hopefully soon-to-be) customer at their offices. Awesome offices - top floor, goldfish tanks, plenty of sun. The elevators are decorated in this kick-ass cold war pseudo-james-bond style. Fittingly, the “down” elevator button is a giant red push button that looks as if it is capable of launching a nuclear missile.

The issue here is obvious. People are hard-wired to think about “alarms” or “fire” or “really embarrassing occurrences” connected with a button like that. So, the tenants in this building needed to tack a second sign to the lift button (somewhat spoiling the “escape hatch” effect) to reassure people that they won’t be followed out of the building by flashing lights and klaxons…