Bad Designs on Campus - Submission
Badly Barricaded Basement Books
Problem description: Any marketing students knows that even the most simple graphics contain an intro, a body, and a conclusion. The panels on the moveable library shelves in the basement of the Duderstadt center are a great example of misleading interfaces. Upon my first encounter with this ultra-cool looking space-saving system, I spent a solid 5 minutes trying to get at books assuming the left icon meant “move stack to the left” and not “open aisle at the left.” Because the arrows are affixed to the center of the column, one gets the impression they imply action on the column. Only after one blunders through all possible button combinations is it realized that all instructions really are available, just poorly communicated. The addition of the reset (the word “reset” is just lazy engineering) button and a superfluous LCD screen only confuse things more. On at least six separate occasions, I’ve witnessed other reasonably intelligent individuals struggle for minutes to attain the book-knowledge contained within these cleverly barricaded basement book shelves.
Proposed solution:There is almost certainly a left-brain / right-brain learning style kind of thing to this interface that will make whoever reads this go, “idiot...” or “oh yeah!” Two solutions may reduce the aisle vs. stack confusion by reducing visual info and providing more obvious feedback.
1. Aisle-Based
Remove LCD. Printed Instructions instead read: Check aisle, push Aisle Clear, Choose Aisle to Open. RESET button becomes ‘Aisle Clear’. Arrows are removed from Left and Right buttons. When users try to open a non-cleared aisle, feedback is given through a blinky LED next to Aisle clear (not the dim LCD). Could be a blinky LED for right and left telling user which aisle to check.
2. Stack-Based
Remove LCD. Same as above, except keep the arrows and reword as “Move Stack Left”, “Move Stack Right”
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